Plasma expression of the intestinal metaplasia markers CDH17 and TFF3 in patients with gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: Few reliable blood markers are available for detecting gastric cancer, mainly owing to the heterogeneity of the cancer. OBJECTIVE: To establish gastric cancer diagnostic markers, we evaluated the levels of plasma cadherin 17 (CDH17) and trefoil factor 3 (TFF3), which are secretory proteins and known markers for intestinal metaplasia (IM), in patients with gastric cancer. METHOD: The protein expression level was analyzed in blood plasma samples from 111 gastric cancer patients and 44 healthy individuals, using a sandwich ELISA kit, followed by statistical analyses. RESULT: Overall, the plasma levels of CDH17 and TFF3 were not significantly different between groups (p = 0.160 and p = 0.113, respectively). However, CDH17 expression was significantly elevated in patients with stage II and III gastric cancers compared to that in healthy controls (p = 0.023 and p = 0.037, respectively). In contrast, TFF3 levels were significantly elevated in patients with stage I (p = 0.001) and T1 gastric cancer (p = 0.013). The sensitivity and specificity of CDH17 were 66.7 and 61.4%, respectively (cutoff point: 0.189 ng/mL); for TFF3, these values were 62.2 and 56.8%, respectively (cutoff point: 5.215 ng/mL). CONCLUSIONS: These findings indicate that secretory protein markers for metaplastic lineages can be used as blood markers for gastric cancer.