Plenty of studies have demonstrated the prognostic value of various inflammation-based indexes in cancer. This study was designed to investigate the prognostic value of the C-reactive protein/albumin (CRP/Alb) ratio in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. A retrospective study of 423 cases with newly diagnosed esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was conducted. We analyzed the association of the CRP/Alb ratio with clinicopathologic characteristics. The prognostic value was explored by univariate and multivariate survival analysis. In addition, we compared the discriminatory ability of the CRP/Alb ratio with other inflammation-based prognostic scores by evaluating the area under the receiver operating characteristics curves (AUC), including the modified Glasgow Prognostic Score (mGPS), neutrophil lymphocyte ratio (NLR) and platelet lymphocyte ratio (PLR). The optimal cut-off value was identified to be 0.095 for the CRP/Alb ratio. A higher level of the CRP/Alb ratio was associated with larger tumor size (P < 0.001), poorer differentiation (P = 0.019), deeper tumor invasion (P = 0.003), more lymph node metastasis (P = 0.015), more distant metastasis (P < 0.001) and later TNM stage (P < 0.001). The CRP/Alb ratio was identified to be the only inflammation-based prognostic score with independent association with overall survival by multivariate analysis (P = 0.031). The AUC value of the CRP/Alb ratio was higher compared with the NLR and PLR, but not mGPS at 6, 12 and 24 months of follow-up. In addition, the CRP/Alb ratio could identify a group of patients with mGPS score of 0 who had comparable overall survival with those with mGPS score of 1. The CRP/Alb ratio is a novel but promising inflammation-based prognostic score in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. It is a valuable coadjutant for the mGPS to further identify patients’ survival differences.

Background: The cell division cycle 20 homolog (CDC20) is an essential cofactor of the anaphase-promoting complex (APC/C). CDC20 overexpression has been detected in many types of human cancers; however, its clinical role in colorectal cancer remains unknown. Methods: Western blotting and immunohistochemistry were used to compare CDC20 expression in adjacent non-cancerous, cancerous and liver metastatic tissues as well as in colon cancer cell lines and normal colon epithelial cell lines. Additionally, the correlation of CDC20 expression with patient clinical parameters and its diagnostic value were statistically analyzed. Results: CDC20 was overexpressed in colon cancer cell lines/primary cancer tissues compared with normal colon epithelial cell lines/adjacent noncancerous tissue samples. Interestingly, CDC20 expression was further increased in metastatic liver tissues. CDC20 protein expression was significantly correlated with clinical stage (P = 0.008), N classification (P = 0.020), M classification (P = 0.013) and pathologic differentiation (P = 0.008). Patients with higher CDC20 expression had a shorter overall survival than those with lower CDC20 expression. Univariate and multivariate analyses indicated that CDC20 expression was an independent prognostic factor (P < 0.001). Conclusion: CDC20 may serve as a potential prognostic biomarker of human colorectal cancer.

Right-sided colon cancer (RSCC) and left-sided colorectal cancer (LSCRC) differ with respect to their biology and genomic patterns. This study aimed to examine whether the primary tumor location is associated with the response to cetuximab in patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Patients with mCRC treated with cetuximab and standard chemotherapy as first- or second-line treatments were compared with randomly chosen patients who were treated with chemotherapy alone between 2005 and 2013. The main outcome measures were the overall response rate (ORR), progression-free survival (PFS), and overall survival (OS). The differences in the outcome were analyzed by using the chi-squared test, Student’s t test, and Kaplan-Meier method. The treatment results of 206 patients with mCRC treated with cetuximab and standard chemotherapy as first- or second-line treatments were compared with those of 210 patients who were treated with chemotherapy alone. As a first-line treatment, cetuximab with chemotherapy was associated with a significantly higher ORR (49.4 % vs. 28.6 %, P = 0.005) as well as longer PFS (9.1 vs. 6.2 months, P = 0.002) and OS (28.9 vs. 20.1 months, P = 0.036) than chemotherapy alone in patients with LSCRC. However, cetuximab neither improved the ORR (36.4 % vs. 26.2 %, P = 0.349) nor prolonged PFS (5.6 vs. 5.7 months, P = 0.904) or OS (25.1 vs. 19.8 months, P = 0.553) in patients with RSCC. As a second-line treatment, cetuximab exhibited a tendency to improve the ORR (23.5 % vs. 10.2 %, P = 0.087) and prolong PFS (4.9 vs. 3.5 months, P = 0.064), and it significantly prolonged OS (17.1 vs. 12.4 months, P = 0.047) compared with chemotherapy alone in the patients with LSCRC. In contrast, as a second-line treatment, cetuximab neither improved the ORR (7.1 % vs. 11.4 %, P = 0.698) nor prolonged PFS (3.3 vs. 4.2 months, P = 0.761) or OS (13.4 vs. 13.0 months, P = 0.652) in patients with RSCC. The addition of cetuximab to chemotherapy in both first- and second-line treatments of mCRC may only benefit patients with primary LSCRC.

Background: Paxillin (PXN) has been found to be aberrantly regulated in various malignancies and involved in tumor growth and invasion. The clinicopathological and prognostic significance of PXN in gastric cancer is still unclear. Methods: The expression of PXN was determined in paired gastric cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues by Western blotting and real-time PCR. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect the expression of PXN in 239 gastric cancer patients. Statistical analysis was applied to investigate the correlation between PXN expression and clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis in patients. Additionally, the effects of PXN on gastric cancer cell proliferation and migration were also evaluated. Results: PXN was up-regulated in gastric cancer tissues and cell lines as compared with adjacent normal tissues and normal gastric epithelial cell line GES-1. Overexpression of PXN was correlated with distant metastasis (P = 0.001) and advanced tumor stage (P = 0.021) in gastric cancer patients. Patients with high PXN expression tended to have poor prognosis compared with patients with low PXN expression (P < 0.001). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that PXN expression was an independent prognostic factor (P = 0.020). Moreover, ectopic expression of PXN promotes cell proliferation and migration in AGS cells whereas knockdown of PXN inhibits cell proliferation and migration in SGC7901 cells. Conclusions: PXN plays an important role in tumor progression and may be used as a potential prognostic indicator in gastric cancer.