Decreased expression of eukaryotic initiation factor 3f is an adverse prognostic factor for stage I–III gastric cancer

Li, Guanghua; Wang, Na; Sun, Chuanjin; Li, Bo

The data from our study showed that the levels of eIF3f protein were significantly lower in GC tissue compared with paired ANCT. Additionally, the decreased expression of eIF3f protein was significantly related to more advanced tumor stages (P = 0.02) and likelihood of recurrence (P = 0.04). No statistically significant relationship was found between the eIF3f levels and sex (P = 0.87), age (P = 0.17), tumor differentiation (P = 0.46), and tumor size (P = 0.16). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that patients with low eIF3f expression had significantly poorer survival compared with patients with high eIF3f expression. Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that tumor size (P = 0.04), recurrence (P <0.01), and eIF3f expression (P = 0.04) were all prognostic predictors of human GC after resection. Based on these results, we propose a bold hypothesis that a preoperative determination of eIF3f expression may be useful in predicting the therapeutic effect and postoperative survival of human GC. A drawback of the present study is the lack of investigation of eIF3f at the molecular and cellular levels in GC. Therefore, further studies should be performed for a more concrete evidence to support the correlation between eIF3f expression and the malignant degree of GC.