Contribution of CXCR4 and SMAD4 in predicting disease progression pattern and benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy in resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Prognosis of patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma is poor. Many prognostic biomarkers have been tested, but most studies included heterogeneous patients. We aimed to investigate the prognostic and/or predictive values of four relevant biomarkers in a multicentric cohort of patients. A total of 471 patients who had resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma were included. Using tissue microarray, we assessed the relationship of biomarker expressions with the overall survival: Smad4, type II TGF-β receptor, CXCR4, and LKB1. High CXCR4 expression was found to be the only independent negative prognostic biomarker [hazard ratio (HR)=1.74; P