phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at o:3499 DOI 10.1038/s41598-024-67058-x Screening for oncogenic AF1q expression predicts disease recurrence in gastric cancer patients AF1q associates with tumor progression and metastases upon WNT signaling. The downstream WNT target CD44 has demonstrated prognostic significance in gastric cancer (GC). This study evaluates the impact of AF1q on tumor stage and survival in GC patients. Immunohistochemical marker expression was analyzed and data were processed to correlation and survival analysis. Out of 182 GC samples, 178 (97.8%) showed moderate to high AF1q expression (p < 0.001), these samples correlated with positive lymph node stage (p = 0.036). In a subgroup analysis of patients with nodal-positive GC (n = 129, 70.9%), enhanced tumoral AF1q expression resulted in impaired recurrence-free survival (RFS, p = 0.030). Enhanced tumoral CD44 expression resulted in impaired disease-specific survival (DSS) in the subgroup of patients with nodal-positive GC (p = 0.031) as well as in the overall GC group (p = 0.005). AF1q demonstrated as an independent prognostic marker for RFS (p = 0.035) and CD44 for DSS (p = 0.036). AF1q has shown potential for prognostication of RFS in GC patients and is predominantly expressed in nodal-positive GC. Testing AF1q provides a possibility of identifying patients with locoregional (and advanced) disease, particularly at risk for disease recurrence. Implementing AF1q into the diagnostic process may facilitate screening, prognosis estimation as well as consideration of preoperative multimodal treatment in patients qualifying for elective upfront surgery. eng AF1q; CD44; Lymph node stage; Recurrence; Survival; Gastric cancer 2024-09-09T07:07:54.203Z LOMv1.0 Author BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Gruber;Elisabeth S.; FN:Elisabeth S. Gruber END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Kenner;Lukas; FN:Lukas Kenner X-ORCID:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2184-1338 END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Tse;William; FN:William Tse END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Jomrich;Gerd; FN:Gerd Jomrich END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Birner;Peter; FN:Peter Birner END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Oberhuber;Georg; FN:Georg Oberhuber END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Schoppmann;Sebastian F.; FN:Sebastian F. Schoppmann END:VCARD BEGIN:VCARD VERSION:3.0 N:Schlederer;Michaela; FN:Michaela Schlederer END:VCARD https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/scheme https://w3id.org/kim/hcrt/text Textdokument Text LOMv1.0 yes https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 application/pdf 1538816 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/o:3499 https://phaidra.vetmeduni.ac.at/api/object/o:3499/thumbnail LOMv1.0 discipline