Increased expression of CD147 and MMP-9 is correlated with poor prognosis of salivary duct carcinoma.

Purpose: The aim of this study was to investigate expression of CD147 and MMP-9 in salivary duct carcinoma (SDC) so as to determine whether these two genes may be correlated with poor prognosis of SDC.

Methods: We examined the significance of the CD147 and MMP-9 expression in SDC (n = 35), non-cancerous salivary tissue (n = 20) in previously untreated patients using immunohistochemical staining. Furthermore, we analyzed the correlation between the expression of these two genes and various clinicopathologic factors including survival status of patients with SDC.

Results: Positive stain of CD147 and MMP-9 was seen in all 35 cases of tumor samples. A statistical correlation was observed between CD147 and MMP-9 expression in SDC tissues. The incidences of high expression were 45.71% for CD147 and 51.43% for MMP-9 in 35 SDC tissues, respectively. High expression of CD147 and MMP-9 was significantly correlated with clinical feature and shorter progression-free survival (PFS) (P (CD147) = 0.031; P (MMP-9) = 0.020) and overall survival (OS) (P (CD147) = 0.044; P (MMP-9) = 0.013).

Conclusion: CD147 and MMP-9 expression is correlated with invasion, metastasis and shorter PFS/OS of SDC. Patients with high expression of CD147 and MMP-9 had poor prognosis than SDC patients with low expression.