title: Up-regulated expression of the uridine phosphorylase gene in human gastric tumors is correlated with a favorable prognosis.
abstract: Uridine phosphorylase (UP) is one of the enzymes involved in 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) activation. The expression was compared in paired specimens from cancerous and non-cancerous regions of gastric, colon and lung cancer patients. Among 28 paired gastric samples, 20 cases showed greater expression in tumors than in normal surrounding tissues and 8 cases showed equal or lower expression levels in tumors. All the gastric patients received 5-FU before and/or after the surgical resection and the prognosis of the patients, whose UP tumor expression increased, was relatively better than that of the patients with equal or less UP gene tumor expression. In contrast, most of the colon (22 cases in total) and all the lung cancer patients (14 in total) did not receive 5-FU and the majority of the colon (12 cases) and lung (10 cases) specimens showed lower expression in the cancerous region. The differential expression between cancerous and non-cancerous regions in colon and lung cancers was not linked with the prognosis. These data suggest that the paired expression level of the UP gene in gastric cancer is a possible prognostic marker for the patients who received 5-FU.
authors.affiliation: Division of Pathology, Chiba Cancer Center, 666-2 Nitona, Chuo-ku, Chiba 260-8717, Japan.
authors.forename: Kiyoko
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Kawamura
authors.forename: Nobuhiro
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Takiguchi
authors.forename: Akihiko
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Wada
authors.forename: Hisanori
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Takenobu
authors.forename: Hideki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Kimura
authors.forename: Hiroaki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Soda
authors.forename: Matsuo
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Nagata
authors.forename: Takehide
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Asano
authors.forename: Masatoshi
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Tagawa
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000369:Aged, 80 and over; D005260:Female; D015971:Gene Expression Regulation, Enzymologic; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D020133:Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction; D013274:Stomach Neoplasms / Q000201:enzymology* / Q000235:genetics / Q000473:pathology; D015854:Up-Regulation; D014543:Uridine Phosphorylase / Q000096:biosynthesis* / Q000235:genetics
chemical_list: D014543:Uridine Phosphorylase