Clinical significance of MYT1L gene polymorphisms in Chinese patients with gastric cancer.

backgroundMyelin transcription factor 1 (MYT1) and its homologue MYT1-like (MYT1L) are the two main members of MYT/NZF family transcription factors, which are highly related, share a high degree of identity and show similar regulatory functions in neural development. There are evidences from several cytology experiments showing that MYT1 is associated with carcinoma. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL

findingsIn the present study, we genotyped 944 surgically resected gastric cancer patients by the SNaPshot method to explore the association of MYT1L rs17039396 polymorphism with survival of gastric cancer in a Chinese population. We found that cardia cancer patients carrying MYT1L rs17039396 GG genotype survived for a significantly shorter time than those carrying the GA genotype. This significance was enhanced in the dominant model (GG vs. GA/AA, log-rank P = 0.001), suggesting a potential protect role of the variant A allele. Multivariate Cox regression analyses showed that the AG/GG genotypes were associated with a significantly decreased risk of death from gastric cancer (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 0.57, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.40-0.81). Stratification analyses further showed that such protective effect was statistically significant in subgroups of patients with tumor size ≤5 cm (adjusted HR = 0.34, 95%CI = 0.19-0.64), well-moderate gastric cancer (adjusted HR = 0.59, 95%CI = 0.35-0.98), no lymph-node metastasis (adjusted HR = 0.49, 95%CI = 0.31-0.76), no distant metastasis (adjusted HR = 0.59, 95%CI = 0.41-0.84). CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: In conclusion, these data represents the first demonstration that MYT1L rs17039396 variants could indentified as a favorable prognostic indicator for gastric cancer, particularly among the cardia gastric cancer. Further validation in other larger studies with different ethnic populations and functional evaluations are needed.