Figure 1.
MTA3 is down-regulated in GEJ adenocarcinoma tissue and in high metastatic potential cancer cell lines.
(A) MTA3 protein is down-regulated in human GEJ adenocarcinoma tissues as determined by immunoblot analysis. N, adjacent noncancerous tissues; C, cancerous tissues. (B) MTA3 transcript is significantly decreased in esophageal and gastric adenocarcinoma tissues, relative to the corresponding normal tissue. The data were from the analysis in Oncomine database. NE, normal esophagus (n = 28); EAC, esophageal adenocarcinoma (n = 75); NG, normal gastric (n = 29); GC, gastric cancer (n = 20). (C) MTA3 mRNA level is decreased in high metastatic potential cell lines of gastric adenocarcinoma and esophageal adenocarcinoma. Gene expression data for MTA3 were extracted from “CCLE Expression Entrez 2012-04-06”. (D) In all 39 tumor cell lines, the exclusively available GEJ adenocarcinoma cell line OE-19 (arrow), which has high metastatic potential, fell into the decreased-MTA3 group composed of 9 cell lines, 7 of which are more invasive. *P<0.05, **P<0.01, ***P<0.001.
Figure 2.
Immunohistochemical staining for MTA3, Snail, and E-cadherin in GEJ adenocarcinoma and adjacent noncancerous tissue.
Representative samples of noncancerous tissue, well differentiated tumor and poorly differentiated tumor are shown. Strong to negative staining for MTA3 (top). Negative to strong staining for Snail (middle). Strong to weak staining for E-cadherin (bottom). The arrow indicates perinuclear staining of Snail. The dotted insert showed strongly positive staining for MTA3 in breast cancer cells as positive control (original magnification 400×).
Table 1.
Relationship between MTA3 expression and clinicopathologic variables in tissue samples of GEJ adenocarcinoma (n = 128).
Table 2.
Relationship between combined expression patterns of MTA3, Snail, and E-cadherin (MTA3−/Snail+/E-cadherin- vs. other expression patterns) and clinicopathologic variables in tissue samples of GEJ adenocarcinoma (n = 128).
Figure 3.
Survival curves of patients according to expression statues of MTA3.
(A) The OS was significantly better among the patients with MTA3-positive tumors than among the patients with MTA3-negative tumors (P<0.001). (B) Among the patients with no lymph node metastasis (N0), the OS was significantly better in the patients with MTA3-positive tumors than in the patients with MTA3-negative tumors (P = 0.018). (C) Among the patients with lymph node metastasis (N1), the OS was significantly better in the patients with MTA3-positive tumors than in the patients with MTA3-negative tumors (P = 0.003). (D) The OS among the patients with MTA3-negative/Snail-positive/E-cadherin-negative tumors was significantly worse than among the patients whose had tumors exhibited other expression patterns (P = 0.003).
Table 3.
Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards models showing variables that affect overall survival in patients with GEJ adenocarcinoma.