Pretreatment CD133 and Cyclooxygenase-2 Expression As the Predictive Markers of the Pathological Effect of Chemoradiotherapy in Rectal Cancer Patients

Background: CD133 confers chemoradioresistance properties to cells and has recently been used to identify cancer-initiating cells.

Objective: We investigated whether the overexpression of CD133 and cyclooxygenase-2 can be used as predictive markers of tumor response to preoperative chemoradiotherapy in patients with rectal cancer.

Setting: The study was conducted at the National Defense Medical College Hospital in Japan.

Patients: We recruited 96 patients who underwent a single regimen of preoperative short-term chemoradiotherapy (20 Gy in 5 fractions with 400 mg/day Tegafur/Uracil for 1 week) and radical resection.

Design: This was a retrospective study. We obtained pretreatment biopsy specimens of these patients and immunostained these specimens with antibodies for CD133, cyclooxygenase-2, p53, p27, p21, and epidermal growth factor receptor. The resected primary tumor was evaluated according to 2 different tumor regression grading systems that were based on the degrees of fibrosis and cytological alterations.

Results: Positivity for CD133 or cyclooxygenase-2 expression was associated with chemoradioresistance, which was determined by the degree of fibrosis, in both univariate (P = .02 and P = .0003) and multivariate (P = .03 and P = .001) analyses. Univariate and multivariate analyses of the degree of cytological alterations also revealed a significant association between chemoradioresistance and the expression of CD133 (P = .005 and P = .003) and cyclooxygenase-2 (P = .005 and P = .03), whereas other markers failed to associate.

Limitations: The information on patients' outcome was not available.

Conclusions: Our study revealed the independent predictive values of CD133 and cyclooxygenase-2 expressions in histological tumor regression after preoperative chemoradiotherapy.