Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Potentials of neuron-specific enolase as a biomarker for gastric cancer

Lingyun Wang¹, Ruirui Hu¹, Hongmei Liu², Wen Li¹, Lili Zhou¹, Xiangyu Liu¹, Yuanyuan Ding¹

¹Department of Gastroenterology; ²Department of Nursing, Jining First PeopleÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s Hospital of Shandong Province, Shandong 272100, China.

For correspondence:- Yuanyuan Ding Email: DenaeDerrierile@yahoo.com Tel:+865372253431

Accepted: 27 February 2020 Published: 31 March 2020

Citation: Wang L, Hu R, Liu H, Li W, Zhou L, Liu X, et al. Potentials of neuron-specific enolase as a biomarker for gastric cancer. Trop J Pharm Res 2020; 19(3):505-511 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v19i3.7

© 2020 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the potentials of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) as a biomarker for gastric cancer (GC).

Methods: Gastric cancer (GC) patients (n = 412) who underwent gastrectomy were recruited over a 3-year period for this study. Their clinicopathological data such as age, sex, histological type, depth, tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis, and distant metastasis were analyzed. The patients were followed up for four years and the outcomes were also assessed. Histological changes in biopsies and levels of expression of NSE in biopsies and serum of patients were determined using immunohistochemical staining, western blotting and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), respectively.

Results: Immunohistochemical staining showed that NSE was differentially expressed in the cytoplasm of GC cells. Histological changes in biopsies of patients in the overexpression group were not significantly different from those of patients in under-expression group (p > 0.05). In NSE overexpression group, the number of patients in early stage GC subgroup (n = 186, 86.10 %, T1) were significantly higher than that in advanced GC subgroup (n = 124, 62.20 % T2–T4) (p < 0.05). However, in NSE under-expression group, there were more patients in advanced GC subgroup (n = 72, 37.70 %) than in early GC subgroup (n = 30, 13.80 %) (p < 0.05). Patients in NSE overexpression group survived longer than those in NSE under-expression group (p < 0.05). The level of expression of NSE significantly decreased with increase in TNM stage (p < 0.05). There was no significant difference in serum NSE level between GC patients and healthy control (p > 0.05). The results of the correlation analysis indicated that NSE levels were positively associated with GC.

Conclusion: The results obtained in this study suggest that NSE could serve as a potential biomarker for GC.

Keywords: Biomarker, Gastric cancer, Neuron-specific enolase, Overexpression, TNM staging