Published online Jul 14, 2023. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v29.i26.4200
Peer-review started: April 24, 2023
First decision: May 16, 2023
Revised: May 20, 2023
Accepted: June 2, 2023
Article in press: June 2, 2023
Published online: July 14, 2023
Processing time: 77 Days and 1 Hours
Nowadays, research reports on the important clinical and prognostic value of phosphorylated-extracellular signal-regulated kinase (P-ERK) and phosphorylated-mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK/ERK) kinase (P-MEK) proteins closely related to raf kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP) have gradually emerged in digestive tract tumors.
The expression of downstream proteins of the ERK/MAPK pathway combined with RKIP in gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST) is scarce.
To detect the expression of RKIP, P-ERK, and P-MEK proteins in GIST and to analyze their relationship with clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of this disease. Try to establish a new prognosis evaluation model using RKIP and P-ERK in combination and analyze its prognosis evaluation efficacy.
This study will focus on this aspect and use immunohistochemistry methods, large sample survival analysis data, and the latest bioinformatics analysis techniques to search for answers to the problem.
Our experimental results showed that the expression of RKIP and P-ERK proteins in GIST was associated with tumor size, NIH 2008 staging, tumor invasion, and P-ERK expression was also related to mitotic count. The expression of the two proteins had a certain negative correlation.
The combined expression of RKIP and P-ERK proteins can serve as an independent risk factor for predicting the prognosis of GIST patients. The new risk assessment model incorporating RKIP and P-ERK has superior evaluation efficacy and is worth further practical application to validate.
As one of the hotspots, our study found that the combination of RKIP and P-ERK proteins can effectively indicate the prognosis of GIST and can be used to guide GIST targeted therapy. More researches are needed to focus on the application and exploration of RKIP and P-ERK proteins in tumor diagnosis and treatment.