Sialyl Tn antigen expression is associated with the prognosis of patients with advanced colorectal cancer

BACKGROUND/AIMS: One of the main problems in multimodal cancer treatment is the lack of prognostic parameters for the individual patient. This study w as conducted to clarify the prognostic factors in patients with advanced co lorectal cancer. METHODOLOGY: We examined DNA ploidy, Ki-67-derived growth fraction and the expression of CA 199, Sialyl Tn (STN) and carcinoembryonic antigens (CEA), along with standard clinicopathological variables including age, sex, tumor location, tumor size, cell differentiation, depth of invasion, and lymph n ode metastasis in 78 patients with advanced colorectal carcinoma, who under went curative. surgical resection. In addition, we determined the prognosti c significance of these parameters. RESULTS: Forty-six patients (59.0%) showed aneuploidy and 32 (41.0%) showed diploidy. The Ki-67 labeling index ranged from 13.9-40.3% with a mean of 2 4.9%. The index was not correlated with standard clinicopathological variab les. There was no significant correlation between seropositive rates for CE A, CA 19-9, or STN and standard clinicopathological variables except for ag e. In tumor tissue, the positive rates for these antigens were 62.8% for CA 19-9, 67.1% for STN, and 96.2% for CEA. There was no significant correlati on between positive rates and clinicopathological variables. The expression of STN in serum had the strongest association with survival, followed by l ymph node metastasis and expression of STN in tissue CONCLUSIONS: We conclude that not only lymph node metastasis but also STN e xpression are important prognostic factors in patients with advanced colore ctal carcinoma who undergo curative surgical resection.