Three-gene predictor of clinical outcome for gastric cancer patients treated with chemotherapy

To identify transcriptional profiles predictive of the clinical benefit of cisplatin and fluorouracil (CF) chemotherapy to gastric cancer patients, endoscopic biopsy samples from 96 CF-treated metastatic gastric cancer patients were prospectively collected before therapy and analyzed using high-throughput transcriptional profiling and array comparative genomic hybridization. Transcriptional profiling identified 917 genes that are correlated with poor patient survival after CF at P<0.05 (poor prognosis signature), in which protein synthesis and DNA replication/recombination/repair functional categories are enriched. A survival risk predictor was then constructed using genes, which are included in the poor prognosis signature and are contained within identified genomic amplicons. The combined expression of three genes—MYC, EGFR and FGFR2—was an independent predictor for overall survival of 27 CF-treated patients in the validation set (adjusted P=0.017), and also for survival of 40 chemotherapy-treated gastric cancer patients in a published data set (adjusted P=0.026). Thus, combined expression of MYC, EGFR and FGFR2 is predictive of poor survival in CF-treated metastatic gastric cancer patients.