You are here

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

Original article
High Ki67 expression is an independent good prognostic marker in colorectal cancer
  1. Nathaniel Melling1,
  2. Charlotte Marie Kowitz2,
  3. Ronald Simon2,
  4. Carsten Bokemeyer3,
  5. Luigi Terracciano4,
  6. Guido Sauter2,
  7. Jakob Robert Izbicki1,
  8. Andreas Holger Marx2
  1. 1Department of Surgery, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
  2. 2Institute of Pathology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
  3. 3Department of Oncology, Hematology, BMT with section Pneumology, Hubertus Wald Cancer Center, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Hamburg, Germany
  4. 4Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  1. Correspondence to Andreas Holger Marx, Institute of Pathology, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Martinistrasse 52, Hamburg 20246, Germany; a.marx{at}uke.de

Abstract

Aims To correlate Ki67 expression with outcome in colorectal cancer (CRC).

Methods Ki67 labelling index (Ki67LI) was analysed by immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray containing 1800 CRCs. The results were compared with clinicopathological and molecular parameters.

Results Ki67LI was considered low in 26.3%, moderate in 56.7% and high in 17.0% of 1653 interpretable CRCs. High Ki67 expression was associated with low tumour stage (p<0.0001) and nodal status (p=0.0315), but not with tumour grade (p=0.8639), histological tumour type (p=0.1542) or tumour localisation, and was an independent prognosticator of favourable survival (p=0.0121). High Ki67 expression was also significantly associated with high-level nuclear β-catenin and p53 expression (p<0.0001 and p=0.0095, respectively).

Conclusions In summary, our data show that high Ki67 expression in CRCs is associated with good clinical outcome. Ki67, p53 and β-catenin overexpression seem to be linked to CRC, and indicate a cellular state of high proliferative activity. Finally, our findings strongly argue for a clinical utility of Ki67 immunostaining as an independent prognostic biomarker in CRC.

  • COLORECTAL CANCER
  • MOLECULAR PATHOLOGY
  • KI 67
  • ANTIBODIES
  • CANCER RESEARCH

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/jclinpath-2015-202985

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text