Prognostic significance of Minichromosome maintenance protein 7 and Geminin expression in patients with 109 soft tissue sarcomas.

Minichromosome maintenance complex (MCM2-7) and Geminin are important in the prevention of DNA re-replication in the cell cycle, and are also prognostic markers for numerous human malignancies. The present study examined Minichromosome maintenance protein 7 (MCM7) and Geminin expression in human soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) to clarify their correlation to the clinicopathological factors. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect the expression of MCM7, Geminin and Ki-67 on paraffin-embedded sections of 109 STSs. Labeling indices (LIs) of the molecules were evaluated in the tumors. Higher LIs of MCM7, Geminin and Ki-67 were significantly correlated with distant metastasis (P<0.01), histological grade (P<0.01) and poor prognosis (P<0.01), respectively. LIs of MCM7 and Geminin were significantly correlated with Ki-67 LIs, (MCM7/Ki-67: rs=0.745, P<0.01 and Geminin/Ki-67: rs=0.604, P<0.01). Multivariate analyses showed that the higher LIs of Geminin, but not MCM7 and Ki-67, were shown to be an independent factor of poorer prognosis (relative risk 2.72, P=0.013). The immunohistochemical expression of MCM7 and Geminin may be novel and useful markers for evaluating the prognosis in patients with human STS.