AURKA is a prognostic biomarker for good overall survival in stage II colorectal cancer patients

Jung, Peter; Horst, David; Kirchner, Thomas; Klauschen, Frederick und Neumann, Jens (2022): AURKA is a prognostic biomarker for good overall survival in stage II colorectal cancer patients. In: Pathology, Research and Practice, Bd. 235, 153936

Abstract

Background: Cancer prevention has augmented the proportion of early stage colorectal cancer (CRC) diagnoses. Especially UICC stage II CRC is in urgent need for a better patient stratification to improve clinical and therapeutic decision making. We analyzed the prognostic value of AURKA expression in stage II CRC patients. By using a scoring system based on staining intensity and frequency, we addressed the association of AURKA with patient survival and clinically relevant molecular markers. Methods: A study cohort of 208 CRC patients (UICC stage II) was assembled. A combined measure of expression frequency and staining intensity of AURKA (H-Score) was analyzed via immunohistochemistry, and the clinical performance of this variable was studied. Association of AURKA with mutant KRAS and abundance of nuclear beta-catenin as a surrogate marker of Wnt activity was examined. Time-dependent ROC analysis revealed the prognostic performance of AURKA at different patient follow-up times. Results: The AURKA H-Score correlated with good overall survival (log-rank test, p-value <0.05) and wild-type KRAS (p-value <0.01). Time-dependent ROC analysis revealed a discriminative ability of the AURKA H-Score regarding overall survival between 5 and 12 years of patient follow-up (AUC: 0.570-0.595). There was no correlation of the AURKA H-Score with disease recurrence or nuclear beta-catenin abundance. Conclusion: By applying universally applicable immunohistochemistry, we propose that the AURKA H-Score, which is a combined measure of staining intensity and frequency of positively staining tumor cells, correlates with good overall survival and a wild-type KRAS status in UICC stage II CRC.

• Dokumententyp: Zeitschriftenartikel
• Fakultät: Medizin
• Themengebiete: 600 Technik, Medizin, angewandte Wissenschaften > 610 Medizin und Gesundheit
• ISSN: 0344-0338
• Sprache: Englisch