Atypical Mucin Expression Predicts Worse Overall Survival in Resectable Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) displays a typical mucin expression pattern which is characterized by MUC1 positive, MUC2 negative, and MUC5AC positive. More and more evidences show that mucins are involved in the development of pancreatic diseases. However, the relationship between mucin expression and prognosis of PDAC patients has been controversial in the past decades; therefore, we aim to figure out the association of mucin expression with survival in PDAC patients who underwent radical resection. METHODS: We performed immunohistochemistry (IHC) to detect the expression of MUC1, MUC2, and MUC5AC in resected PDAC specimens from Shanghai Cancer Center, Fudan University (FUSCC, n = 427) and obtained the corresponding clinical statistical data for retrospective study. Kaplan-Meier methods and Mantel-Cox tests were used to compare the survival curves, and the Cox regression model was employed for multivariate analyses to determine the independent risk factors. Survival analysis was also performed in the Queensland Centre for Medical Genomics (QCMG, n = 70) PDAC cohort to verify the conclusion. RESULTS: Both the FUSCC cohort and the QCMG cohort demonstrated that MUC1 absence was significantly correlated with worse overall survival (OS). The presence of MUC2 showed marginal significance in predicting shorter OS of PDAC patients, while MUC5AC had no prognostic value. In the FUSCC cohort, MUC1 absence was associated with increased proportion of stage III PDAC (p = 0.011), and MUC1 absence and MUC2 presence were associated with tumour perineural aggression (p = 0.011 and p = 0.030, respectively). Multivariable adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for mortality of MUC1 and MUC2 were 0.492 (95% CI: 0.274-0.883, p = 0.017) and 1.596 (95% CI: 1.061-2.401, p = 0.025), respectively. CONCLUSIONS: MUC1 absence or MUC2 presence is independently associated with poor OS among patients with resectable PDAC. MUC5AC absence tended to be associated with short-term death.