CXCL1 expression is correlated with Snail expression and affects the prognosis of patients with gastric cancer

Gastric cancer (GC) continues to result in a poor survival rate and prognostic biomarkers for the disease are lacking. Chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand (CXCL1) expression plays a critical role in tumor metastasis, and Snail promotes epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) to promote metastasis. Therefore, the present study aimed to investigate the correlation between CXCL1 and Snail expression and the effect of CXCL1 expression on the survival of patients with GC. CXCL1 and Snail expression in paraffin-embedded tissue sections from 127 patients with GC were each assessed by immunohistochemistry. Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analyses were performed to evaluate the prognostic significance of CXCL1 and Snail. Evaluation of the association between CXCL1 and Snail expression and clinical characteristics was based on the χ² test. Spearman's rank correlation coefficient and Fisher's exact test were used to explore the association between CXCL1 and Snail expression in GC tissues. CXCL1 was found to be significantly associated with tumor invasion (P=0.003), tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging (P=0.001), tumor size (P=0.013) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.022) in GC. Snail overexpression was also significantly associated with tumor invasion (P=0.001), TNM staging (P=0.005), tumor size (P=0.026), lymph node metastases (P=0.014) and perineural invasion (P=0.009). CXCL1 and Snail expression were independent factors for a worse overall survival rate, as determined by multivariate analysis (P=0.011 and P=0.018; respectively). The combined expression of CXCL1 and Snail resulted in a worse prognosis compared with the other three groups (P=0.005). Furthermore, there was a significantly positive correlation between CXCL1 and Snail expression in GC (r=0.431; P<0.001). The expression of CXCL1 is significantly associated with Snail expression and may be used as a predictive co-biomarker for patient prognosis and tumor aggressiveness in GC. CXCL1 may promote GC metastasis by regulating EMT.