Clinicopathological Analysis and Prognostic Assessment of TCN1 in Patients with Gastric Cancer

Background Stomach cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer worldwide. TCN1 mainly encodes the vitamin B12 transporter, transcobalamin. TCN1 is a marker of gastrointestinal tumor progression, but the impact of TCN1 on survival is unclear. Material/Methods Gastrointestinal tumor records were reviewed and analyzed, clinicopathological data were summarized, immunohistochemical detection of TCN1 was performed again, and the protein expression in tumor tissue, non-tumor tissue, and lymph nodes was semi-quantitatively analyzed. Patients were followed up for 5 years to determine the 5-year survival rates. Results The strong immune reactivity of the TCN1 protein was significantly correlated with tumor invasion depth, regional lymph nodes, and a tumor diameter of >5 cm (Z = -2.531 and P = .016; Z = 3.785 and P < .001; Z = 2.541 and P = .049). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the total survival time of patients in the low-expression TCN1 group was significantly longer than that in the high-expression TCN1 group (P = .001; Table 2 and Figure 5). The mean survival time of all patients was 49.774 months (95% CI: 47.871-51.676; Table 4) and the 5-year overall survival rates were 73.3, 50.8, and 34.0%, respectively. Multivariate analysis revealed that regional lymph nodes (HR = 1.253; 95% CI: 1.031-1.747, P = .012), TCN1 immune expression status (HR = 2.707; 95% CI: 1.068-1.886, P = .016), and pTNM staging (HR = 2.293; 95% CI: 1.583-3.321; P = .001) were independent risk factors for poor survival. Conclusion The high expression of TCN1 in gastric tumor tissues was found to be associated with the clinicopathological factors of patients, and the high expression of TCN1 was shown to indicate a poor clinical prognosis.