Analysis of genetic status of pivotal driver genes in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and their correlation with clinicopathologic features

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the relationship between genetic characteristics of pivotal driver genes and clinicopathological features in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma(PDAC). Methods: Mutations in related genes in 269 PDAC patients were detected with targeted sequencing, and the relationship between the genetic status of pivotal driver genes (KRAS、TP53、SMAD4 and CDKN2A) and clinicopathological features (including age, tumor differentiation, and prognosis, etc) were analyzed. Results: Among 269 patients, KRAS, TP53, SMAD4 and CDKN2A mutations were identified in 222 cases (82.53%), 148 cases (55.02%), 41 cases (15.24%) and 30 cases (11.15%) respectively. KRAS mutations were missense mutations, of which 94.59% occurred in codon 12 of exon 2 and 5.41% in codon 61 in exon 3. KRAS mutation might be correlated with age, with a mutation rate of 80.09% in patients younger than 70 years old and 93.75% in patients older than 70 years old (P<0.05); TP53 mutation was correlated with the tumor differentiation, with a mutation rate of 52.52% in well/moderately differentiated patients and 74.19% in poorly differentiated patients (P<0.05); SMAD4 or CDKN2A mutations were not significantly associated with the clinicopathological features. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that TP53 mutation was an independent risk factor for prognosis of PDAC patients. Conclusions: The genetic status of KRAS and TP53 genes are accociated with the age and tumor differentiation respectively, and TP53 mutation can be used as a reference index to predict the prognosis of PDAC patients.

Keywords

• |pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma|driver gene|clinicopathological feature|prognosis