Tumoral FOXP3 expression is associated with favorable clinicopathological variables and good prognosis in gastric adenocarcinoma: the tumor suppressor function of tumoral FOXP3 is related with the P21 expression in gastric adenocarcinoma

The function and contribution of tumoral FOXP3 in gastric cancer development remain poorly understood. Thus, we studied the expression of tumoral FOXP3 and its relationship with the well-known tumor suppressor proteins P21 and P53 in gastric adenocarcinoma. The tissue microarray was constructed from 182 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma. The immunohistochemistry was performed on 4-μm tissue sections from each tissue microarray block. We found that positive tumoral FOXP3 expression was significantly correlated with a lower T category, a lower N category, a lower recurrence rate, and less lymphatic invasion. Furthermore, the survival analysis revealed that the tumoral FOXP3-positive group had significantly increased overall survival and disease-free survival rates compared with the tumoral FOXP3-negative group. Additionally, P21 expression showed a significant positive correlation with tumoral FOXP3 expression in gastric adenocarcinoma cells. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that tumoral FOXP3 expression is associated with favorable clinicopathological variables and good prognosis in gastric adenocarcinoma through increased expression of the tumor suppression protein P21.