Abstract 1139: Prognostic value of angiopoietin-like protein 2 (ANGPTL2) at the tumor margins in patients with gastric cancer

Background. Angiopoietin-like protein 2 (ANGPTL2) is a secreted protein belonging to the angiopoietin family.It has been reported to act as a causative mediator of chronic inflammation andmetabolic abnormalities. In ovarian and lung cancer, ANGPTL2 expression in tumor cells was reported to be associated with unfavorable prognosis. So far,clinical and prognostic significance of ANGPTL2 in human gastric cancer remains unknown. Aim. This study investigated the expression of ANGPTL2 in tumor cells using immunohistochemistry and to evaluate its clinical and prognostic significance in patients with human gastric cancer (GC). Materials and methods. Two hundred and eighty two (n=282) samples of GC patients were investigated for the expression of ANGPTL2 in tumor cells using standard immunohistochemistry (IHC). The IHC score of ANGPTL2 in tumor cells was determined on the basis of both staining intensity and the percentage of positive cells. The IHC score was dichotomized at the cutoff value predictive of overall survival using a non-parametric receiver operating characteristic analysis. The association between the expression of ANGPTL2 intumor cells and clinicopathological features was analyzed. Impact of ANGPTL2 expression in tumor cells on overall survival (OS) was also analyzed usingunivariate and multivariate analyses. Results. ANGPTL2 protein was localized mainly in the cytoplasm of tumor cells, and partly in the nucleus. High cytoplasmic ANGPTL2 was significantly associated with higher age (p=0.04), larger tumor size (p