Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2025. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Jul 15, 2025; 17(7): 107211
Published online Jul 15, 2025. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v17.i7.107211
Stemness signatures reflect prognostic disturbances in gastric cancer
Wen-Feng Pu, Xiao Yang, Xiao-Qing Wang, Xiao-Guang Guo, Mi-Yuan Yang
Wen-Feng Pu, Department of Gastroenterology, Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University and Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China
Xiao Yang, College of Pharmacy, Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing 400000, China
Xiao-Qing Wang, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University and Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China
Xiao-Guang Guo, Department of Pathology, Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University and Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China
Mi-Yuan Yang, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University and Nanchong Central Hospital, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China
Co-first authors: Wen-Feng Pu and Xiao Yang.
Author contributions: Pu WF is the primary and corresponding author of the paper; Yang X also contributed equally to this work and shares the role of the corresponding author; PU WF oversaw and coordinated the project; Pu WF and Yang X were responsible for conducting the experiments, analyzing the data, and drafting the manuscript; Wang XQ and Guo XG were involved in data curation and assisted with the behavioral experiments; Yang MY provided additional resources; Guo XG handled the pathological processing and immunohistochemistry analysis; Yang X also played a key role in data collection and validation.
Institutional review board statement: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Nanchong Central Hospital, Approval No: 2024 No. 113.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors state that no commercial or financial relationships could be viewed as potential conflicts of interest during this research.
Data sharing statement: The processed scRNA-seq data and the codes associated with this study are available in Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15004451).
Open Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (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: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Wen-Feng Pu, Department of Gastroenterology, Beijing Anzhen Nanchong Hospital of Capital Medical University and Nanchong Central Hospital, No. 97 Renmin South Road, Shunqing District, Nanchong 637000, Sichuan Province, China. 1047951869@qq.com
Received: March 19, 2025
Revised: April 20, 2025
Accepted: May 22, 2025
Published online: July 15, 2025
Processing time: 117 Days and 23.5 Hours
Core Tip

Core Tip: The results of this study indicate that the proposed gastric cancer (GC) stemness sensitivity model offers prognostic value that exceeds that of conventional clinicopathological staging, therefore providing more precise guidance for clinical decision-making and post-treatment management. The strong positive association between Niemann-Pick type C2 (NPC2) expression and GC progression highlights NPC2 as a promising prognostic biomarker. However, the functional role of NPC2 in GC remains insufficiently characterized. In this study, cellular experiments demonstrated that elevated expression of NPC2 enhances tumor cell stemness, invasiveness, migratory capacity, and resistance to radiotherapy and standard chemotherapeutic agents.