þÿ<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/strict.dtd"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META name="generator" content="Adobe InDesign HTML Export Plug-in"> <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1"> <META http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <TITLE>yam49_009-017.html</TITLE> <STYLE type="text/css">  </STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY bgcolor="#F0FFFF"> <DIV id="layer1"> <DIV class="dynamic-style-1"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-2">Yonago Acta medica 2006;49:9-17</SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-4"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-5">Expression of phospho-Akt and PTEN Proteins Predicts the Survival of Patients with Pancreatic Cancer <BR></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-6"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-7">Yoshimi Ozaki-Ohgami, Akemi Iwamoto, Shizue Yoshioka, Shigeru Tatebe, Yasuaki Hirooka and Masahide Ikeguchi<BR></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-8"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-9">Division of Surgical Oncology, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Tottori University Faculty of Medicine, Yonago 683-8504 Japan<BR></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-6"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-10">The phosphatidylinositol-3 kinase (PI3K)-Akt signaling pathway is known to protect a variety of cells from apoptosis. Phospho-Akt (p-Akt) can facilitate cell survival and inactivating pro-apoptotic proteins. The phosphatase and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome ten (PTEN) is a natural biological inhibitor of p-Akt in the PI3K-Akt pathway. The relationship between the expressions of p-Akt and PTEN and pancreatic cancer is unknown. Here, we designed a study to clarify the prognostic significance of p-Akt and PTEN expression in patients with pancreatic cancer. Immunohistochemical analysis of p-Akt and PTEN protein was performed on 51 specimens of pancreatic cancer. The expression of p-Akt was detected in 32 patients (62.7%). The expression of p-Akt was frequently detected in patients with advanced stage pancreatic cancer (<I>P</I> = 0.0233). Patients with p-Akt-positive tumors had significantly worse prognoses than those with p-Akt-negative tumors (overall survival; 11.3% versus 25.7%). The expression of PTEN was detected in 26 patients (51.0%). Patients with PTEN-positive tumors had significantly better prognoses than those with PTEN-negative tumors (overall survival; 29.9% versus 0%). Patients with p-Akt-positive and PTEN-negative tumors had significantly worse prognoses than those with p-Akt-negative and PTEN-positive tumors (overall survival; 0% versus 39.1%). Multivariate analysis revealed that expression of p-Akt was an independent prognostic factor as well as arterial invasion and lymph node metastasis. The expression of p-Akt and PTEN proteins determined by immunohistochemistry may be a new method for predicting the prognosis of patients with pancreatic cancer. <BR></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-11"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-12">Key words: immunohistochemistry; pancreatic cancer; phosphatase and tensin homologue deleted on chromosome ten; phosphorylated-Akt<BR></SPAN> </DIV> <DIV class="dynamic-style-6"> <SPAN class="dynamic-style-10"> <IMG SRC="../pdficonsmall.gif" ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" X-SAS-IseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight> <A HREF="49_009-010.pdf ">pages 9 and 10 with/without table(s) and graphic(s) in PDF (56 k)</A> <BR><BR> <IMG SRC="../pdficonsmall.gif" ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" X-SAS-IseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight> <A HREF="49_011.pdf ">Page 11 in PDF (280 k)</A> <BR><BR> <IMG SRC="../pdficonsmall.gif" ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" X-SAS-IseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight> <A HREF="49_012-013.pdf ">Pages 12 and 13 in PDF (96 k)</A> <BR><BR> <IMG SRC="../pdficonsmall.gif" ALIGN="MIDDLE" BORDER="0" HSPACE="10" X-SAS-IseImageWidth X-SAS-UseImageHeight> <A HREF="49_014-017.pdf ">Pages 14 to 17 in PDF (220 k)</A> <BR> <BR> <IMG SRC="../../backIcon.gif" ALIGN="middle" hspace="10"> <A HREF="49-1contents.html"> RETURN</A><BR><BR></SPAN> </DIV> </DIV> </BODY> </HTML>