Association of CDX2 and mucin expression with chemotherapeutic benefits in patients with stage II/III gastric cancer.

Background: Better predictors of patients with stage II/III gastric cancer (GC) most likely to benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy are urgently needed. This study aimed to assess the ability of CDX2 and mucin markers to predict prognosis and fluorouracil-based adjuvant chemotherapy benefits.

Methods: CDX2 and mucin protein expressions were examined by immunohistochemistry and compared with survival and adjuvant chemotherapy benefits in a prospective evaluation cohort of 782 stage II/III GC patients. Then, the main findings were validated in an independent validation cohort (n = 386) and an external mRNA sequencing dataset (ACRG cohort, n = 193).

Results: In the evaluation cohort, CDX2, CD10, MUC2, MUC5AC, and MUC6 expressions were observed in 59.7%, 26.7%, 27.6%, 55.1%, and 57.7% of patients, respectively. However, only the expression of CDX2 was found to be associated with adjuvant chemotherapy benefits. Most importantly, CDX2-negative patients had a poorer prognosis when treated with surgery only, while the prognosis of CDX2-negative and CDX2-positive patients was similar when receiving postoperative adjuvant chemotherapy. Further analysis revealed that patients with CDX2 negative tumors benefited from chemotherapy (5-year overall survival rates: 60.0% with chemotherapy vs. 23.2% with surgery-only, p < 0.001), whereas patients with CDX2 positive tumors did not (p  = 0.004). Consistent results were obtained in the validation and ACRG cohorts.

Conclusions: Negative expression of CDX2 is an independent risk factor for survival in stage II/III GC, but subsequent adjuvant chemotherapy is able to compensate for this unfavorable effect. Therefore, active chemotherapy is more urgent for patients with negative CDX2 expression than for patients with positive CDX2 expression.