Clinicopathological Correlation and Prognostic Significance of Protein Kinase Cα Overexpression in Human Gastric Carcinoma

Objectives: This study investigated the PKCα protein expression in gastric carcinoma, and correlated it with clinicopathological parameters. The prognostic significance of PKCα protein expression in gastric carcinoma was analyzed. Methods: Quantitative real-time PCR test was applied to compare the PKCα mRNA expression in tumorous and nontumorous tissues of gastric carcinoma in ten randomly selected cases. Then PKCα protein expression was evaluated in 215 cases of gastric carcinoma using immunohistochemical method. The immunoreactivity was scored semiquantitatively as: 0 = absent; 1 = weak; 2 = moderate; and 3 = strong. All cases were further classified into two groups, namely PKCα overexpression group with score 2 or 3, and non-overexpression group with score 0 or 1. The PKCα protein expression was correlated with clinicopathological parameters. Survival analysis was performed to determine the prognostic significance of PKCα protein expression in patients with gastric carcinoma. Results: PKCα mRNA expression was upregulated in all ten cases of gastric carcinoma via quantitative real-time PCR test. In immunohistochemical study, eighty-eight out of 215 cases (41%) of gastric carcinoma revealed PKCα protein overexpression, which was statistically correlated with age (P = 0.0073), histologic type (P