Kindlin-2: a novel adhesion protein related to tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis, and patient outcome in gastric cancer

BackgroundKindlin-2 has been confirmed as an essential element of bidirectional integrin signaling. In recent years, the relationship between Kindlin-2 expression and cancers has been a focus of interest. However, the relationship between Kindlin-2 expression in gastric cancer and tumor invasion, metastasis, and the outcome of patients have not been studied.MethodsKindlin-2 expression at protein and RNA levels were detected by Western blot and real-time polymerase chain reaction in 40 pairs of gastric cancer samples. In addition, the correlations between Kindlin-2 expression and clinicopathologic factors as well as the prognosis of the patients were analyzed. Multivariate Cox regression was used to study the effect of Kindlin-2 expression on overall and progression-free survival.ResultsWe found that Kindlin-2 was up-regulated both at RNA (P = .027) and protein levels (P = .014) in gastric cancer tissues. Tumor samples with high Kindlin-2 expression (Kindlin-2/β-actin:tumor tissue/paraneoplastic tissue, ≥2) was observed in 55% of the patients. Moreover, Kindlin-2 expression had a significant positive correlation with tumor stromal invasion (P = .014), lymph node metastasis (P = .007), and TNM stage (P = .014). Patients with high Kindlin-2 expression had significantly poorer overall survival (P = .012) and progression-free survival (P = .012). High Kindlin-2 expression was an independent risk factor of progression-free survival (hazard ratio, 5.2; 95% confidence interval, 1.1–3.3; P = .032).ConclusionsKindlin-2 may play an important role in the development of gastric cancer and it is a potential factor that could be used to evaluate the outcome of gastric cancer. Kindlin-2 may shed new light on evaluating the prognosis and targeted therapy of gastric cancer.