BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to investigate the expression level of martrilin-3 (MATN3) in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC) and to investigate the prognostic significance of MATN3.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data were used to predict the expression and prognostic value of MATN3 mRNA in GAC patients. Seventy-six GAC patients had GAC tissue samples and paired adjacent normal tissue samples collected retrospectively to examine the MATN3 protein expression level by immunohistochemical staining. Furthermore, Kaplan-Meier univariate and Cox multivariate analyses were used to verify the correlation between MATN3 expression and clinicopathological parameters of GAC patients and the prognostic significance of MATN3.

RESULTS: The GEO and TCGA data predicted that MATN3 mRNA levels were significantly higher in GAC tissue compared to normal tissue (all p<0.05). Further survival analyses showed that GAC patients with high mRNA expression of MATN3 had significantly lower disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) time than those with low mRNA expression of MATN3 (all p<0.05). Subsequent immunohistochemical staining results confirmed that the MATN3 protein levels in GAC tissues were highly expressed (p=0.000) compared to normal tissues. In addition, GAC patients with high protein expression of MATN3 had remarkably decreased OS compared to patients with low protein expression of MATN3 (p=0.000). Univariate and multivariate survival analyses revealed that MATN3 high expression could be used as an independent predictor of poor prognosis in GAC patients (all p=0.000).

CONCLUSIONS: This study confirmed that MATN3 protein was highly expressed in GAC patients, and MATN3 overexpression could be used as an independent predictor of poor prognosis in GAC patients.

Keywords: Matrilin Proteins