Clinical Value of Serum Thrombospondin-2 Combined with CA19-9 in Early Diagnosis of Gastric Cancer

Lanzhi Li; Jie Dong; Lei Fu; Xinhua Xia; Feng Pan; Yuan Ning

doi:10.1155/2021/2483964

Clinical Value of Serum Thrombospondin-2 Combined with CA19-9 in Early Diagnosis of Gastric Cancer

J Oncol. 2021 Oct 7:2021:2483964. doi: 10.1155/2021/2483964. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Lanzhi Li¹, Jie Dong², Lei Fu³, Xinhua Xia⁴, Feng Pan⁴, Yuan Ning⁵

Affiliations

¹ Health Examination Department, Yantaishan Hospital, Yantai 64000, China.
² Department of Clinical Laboratory, Yantai Yuhuangding Hospital Affiliated To Qingdao University, Yantai 264000, China.
³ PIVAS, Affiliated Qingdao Central Hospital, Qingdao University, Qingdao 266000, China.
⁴ Ward Department, Zhangqiu District People's Hospital, Jinan 250200, China.
⁵ Supply Support Center, The Central Hospital Affiliated to Shandong First Medical University, 105 Jiefang Road, Jinan 250013, Shandong, China.

Abstract

Gastric cancer (GC) is a kind of common cancer worldwide. Too late in diagnosis results in poor prognosis of patients with GC. Thrombospondin-2 (THBS2) is a type of secreted protein that has been found to be a diagnostic biomarker in a variety of cancers. Our study aimed to uncover the clinical value of THBS2 in early detection for patients with gastric cancer. THBS2 was upregulated in gastric cancer tissue compared with normal tissue via analyzing data obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Additionally, the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed that the level of serum THBS2 and carcinoembryonic antigen, CA19-9, was higher dramatically in patients with early gastric cancer (EGC) than that in healthy control (HC) in addition to patients with benign gastric tumor (BGT), which suggested that THBS2 indeed associated with GC. Receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve assay was conducted to demonstrate that serum THBS2 was similar to CA19-9 to distinguish patients with early gastric cancer from healthy control and patients with benign gastric tumor and that THBS2 combined with CA19-9 improved the detective performance of THBS2 for early gastric cancer. Furthermore, we applied the gene set enrichment analysis assay to analyze signaling pathways related to THBS2. We found that THBS2 positively controlled MAPK and WNT signaling pathways, which indicated that THBS2 might exert its functions via the pathway mentioned above. Thus, our study expounded that serum THBS2 could serve as a vital early diagnostic marker for patients with gastric cancer.