Over-expression of metastasis-associated in colon cancer-1 (MACC1) associates with better prognosis of gastric cancer patients

The aim of this study was to detect metastasis-associated in colon cancer-1 (MACC1) expression in Chinese gastric cancer and analyze the relationship between MACC1 expression and postoperative survival. The expression of MACC1 and c-MET protein in a sample of 128 gastric cancer tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry. A retrospective cohort study on the prognosis was carried out and data were collected from medical records. The positive rate of MACC1 protein expression in gastric cancer was 47.66%, higher than that in adjacent noncancerous mucosa (P < 0.001). MACC1 protein expression was not related to the clinicopathological variables involved. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the survival of MACC1 positive group tended to be better than that of MACC1 negative group, particularly in patients with stage III carcinoma (P=0.032). Cox regression analysis revealed that MACC1 protein over-expression in gastric cancer tended to be a protective factor with hazard ratio of 0.621 (P=0.057). Immunohistochemical analysis showed that the positive rate of c-MET protein expression was much higher in cases with positive MACC1 expression in gastric cancer (P=0.002), but P53 expression was not associated with MACC1 expression. MACC1 over-expression implies better survival and may be an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer in Chinese patients.