Abstract: Objective To investigate the expression of miR-451 and its clinical significance in gastric cancer. Methods The miR-451 expression was detected in 92 samples of gastric cancer and 47 sapmles of normal stomach mucosa. The correlations of miR-451 expression with clinicopathologic characteristics, overall survival and disease-free survival were an⁃ alyzed in patients with gastric cancer. Results The overexpression rate of miR-451 was 38.04% in gastric cancer, which was significantly lower than 76.60% in adjacent normal tissues (χ2=18.503， P＜0.001). The overexpression rate of miR-451 was significantly lower in Ⅲ-Ⅳ stages of gastric cancer than that in Ⅰ-Ⅱ stages (27.3% vs 54.1%, P=0.009). The expres⁃ sion of miR-451 was also lower in patients with lymph node metastasis than that in patients without lymph node metastasis (27.1% vs 57.6%, P=0.004). However, there were no significant differences in miR-451 expressions between different age, gender, histological grade and T stage groups (P > 0.05). The overall survival rate was significantly higher in patients with high expression of miR-451 than that in patients with low expression of miR-451(69.2% vs 39.1%, P=0.003). Conclusion miR- 451 is associated with the malignant transformation, progression, and prognosis of gastric cancer, and which can be used as a potential target of therapy and a biomarker of diagnosis and prognosis of gastric cancer in the future.

Key words: stomach neoplasms, carcinoma, prognosis, gene expression, in situ hybridization, miR-451