Clinicopathologic and Prognostic Significance of Her2 Neu and p53 Overexpression in Gastric Adenocarcinoma

Background: Gastric cancer is one of the major causes of mortality worldwide. Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 is a protooncogene present on chromosome 17. Genetic alternations play a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of cancers involving carcinoma of stomach. The most frequent change is observed in p53 gene. The objective of this study is to determine the percentage of expression of Her2 Neu and p53 nuclear protein in gastric adenocarcinoma and compare the expression with other clinicopathological variables. Methods: In this cross-sectional observational study, 90 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma in the time period of 3 years were taken. Scoring for Her2 Neu and p53 expression was done using specific scoring systems for all the cases. Data were entered in Microsoft Excel and analysed using SPSS software. Results: In our analysis, majority of patients were distributed in the 61-70 age group (37.8%). Male to Female ratio was 2.56. Out of 90 cases, 71.7% was intestinal type of adenocarcinoma. p53 expression was seen in 44.4% of gastric adenocarcinomas and intestinal type cases showed increased expression, while Her2 Neu expression was seen in 11 cases and all the cases were of intestinal type. In this study, statistically significant association was found between p53 expression and lymph node involvement in the tumour and also between p53 expression and serosal invasion of the tumour. No statistically significant association was found between Her2 Neu overexpression and other variables. Conclusion: p53 expression correlates with poor prognosis of the patients as it is more frequently associated with cases showing lymph node metastasis and increased depth of invasion of tumour. p53 expression was also frequent among higher grade tumours which also indicate the poor prognostic value of this marker. Targeted therapy with anti-Her2 Neu antibody can be implemented in the cases with Her2 Neu overexpression.