Expression of SOX9 in Gastric Adenocarcinoma – An Immunohistochemical Study.
Main Article Content
Abstract
Background:
Gastrointestinal tract (GIT) malignancies constitute about 27% of total cancers and 20% of all cancer deaths, with the highest burden of 62% in Asia. As GIT malignancies are on the rise in developing countries, SOX9, a potential biomarker belonging to the SOX family, helps in evaluating the clinicopathological and prognostic implications of gastric carcinomas.
Methodology:
After obtaining ethical clearance, the study was done after reviewing patients’ medical records in the Department of Pathology, Tertiary Care Hospital located in Kanchipuram. Histopathological and immunohistochemical evaluation was done on 40 representative blocks of gastric carcinoma. Data was entered in MS Excel worksheet and analyzed using SPSS software version 27.
Results:
In the present study, SOX9 showed >3 weighted score in 5 cases of poorly differentiated carcinoma (41.6%), 4 cases of moderately differentiated carcinoma (30.76%) and <3 weighted score in all well differentiated carcinomas. Statistical significance was found between histological grading and the weighted score of SOX9
(p-value <0.005).
Conclusion:
In this study, we observed that high expression of SOX9 was related to tumor progression. This indicated that there is a strong association between SOX9 expression and gastric carcinogenesis. Therefore, SOX9 can be used as a novel prognostic marker for the diagnosis of gastric carcinoma.