Arg tyrosine kinase expression in human gastric adenocarcinoma is associated with vessel invasion.

Gastric cancer is one of the prevalent cancer types in the Far East region. In order to discover new prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers for gastric cancer progression, we have used degenerated PCR primers designed to amplify all expressed protein tyrosine kinase molecules from human cancer tissues. In previous studies, we have shown the clinical significance of arg tyrosine kinases in a colorectal cancer progression model. We further investigated the protein expression of arg tyrosine kinase by immunohistochemistry and analyzed the clinicopathological association with human cancers. Specimens from 79 patients were examined and this demonstrated that the expression of arg kinase showed no statistically significant correlation with the patients' overall survival. However, higher levels of arg kinase immunoreactivity did show a statistically significant association with vessel invasion in gastric cancer tissues examined. This indicates a potential involvement of arg in gastric cancer invasion and progression.