Immunohistochemical expression of TGF beta (TGF-β), TGF beta receptor 1 (TGFBR1), and Ki67 in intestinal variant of gastric adenocarcinomas.

Although in the last decades the incidence of gastric cancer declined, at present it is ranked worldwide on the fourth place between all human cancer pathology. Also, it has an aggressive behavior, the majority of patients being diagnosed in advanced stages. One of the key factors to control survival improvement of those patients is to clarify the molecular mechanisms involved in initiation, progression, invasion, and metastasis of gastric cancer. We thus investigated the immunoreactivity for TGF-β, TGFBR1, and Ki67 of 25 specimens of intestinal gastric adenocarcinomas, and compared this with the correspondent reactivity for three specimens of diffuse gastric carcinomas; in the end, we tried to establish a statistical correlation with major clinicomorphological parameters. As a result, we noticed that the highest reactivity was present in the diffuse type compared with the intestinal variant, in which the TGF-β reactivity progressively increased along the normal epithelium-intestinal metaplasia-dysplasia-carcinoma sequence. Also, we found for intestinal variant that TGF-β immunoreactivity correlated significantly with tumor degree of differentiation and proliferative activity measured based on Ki67 immunoreactivity. In conclusion, TGF-β is implicated in the progression of intestinal type of gastric adenocarcinomas and its immunoreactivity assessment for these targets has a prognostic value.