Clinical impact and prognostic value of CD147 and MMP-7 expression in patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Aim: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a lethal disease with short overall survival. It is of great significance to identify new biomarkers to predict prognosis of PDAC patients after surgery. Methods: In this study, we examined the expression of CD147 and MMP-7 in 90 PDAC neoplastic tissues and paired non-neoplastic tissues from patients who underwent surgery and followed-up for as long as 87 months by immunohistochemistry staining. Χ2 test, Kaplan-Meier and log-rank test were used to analysis the correlation between CD147, MMP-7 expression and clinicopathological features. Prognostic analysis was carried out by using multivariate Cox regression models. Results: Our results showed that expression of both CD147 and MMP-7 were increased in neoplastic tissue (P<0.001). MMP-7 expression in neoplastic tissue positively correlated with lymph node metastasis (P<0.05). Both CD147 and MMP-7 expression in neoplastic tissue had significantly impact on overall survival in patients with PDAC (P<0.05). More importantly, MMP-7 expression was correlated with the expression of CD147 in PDAC patients. Of 81 analyzed specimen, concurrent expression of CD147 and MMP-7 was found in 29 patients and had significantly negative impact on overall survival. Multivariate analysis determined that co-expression of CD147 and MMP-7 was an independent factor for prognosis. Conclusion: Our results indicate that CD147 and MMP-7 expression is associated with overall survival in PDAC patients and concurrent expression of CD147 and MMP-7 could better predict the prognosis after surgery. The conclusion of this study can help physicians to make better follow-up decision to monitor the disease progression in PDAC patents.