CRIP1 expression is correlated with a favorable outcome and less metastases in osteosarcoma patients

Daniel Baumhoer 1,2,* , Mareike Elsner 3,* , Jan Smida 2,4 , Stephanie Zillmer 2 , Sandra Rauser 3 , Cedrik Schoene 3 , Benjamin Balluff 3 , Stefan Bielack 5 , Gernot Jundt 1 , Axel Walch 3,# , and Michaela Nathrath 2,4,# 1 Bone Tumor Reference Center at the Institute of Pathology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland 2 Clinical Cooperation Group Osteosarcoma, Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen - National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Neuherberg, Germany 3 Institute of Pathology, Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen - National Research Centre for Environment and Health, Neuherberg, Germany 4 Department of Pediatrics, Technische Universitaet Muenchen and Pediatric Oncology Center, Munich, Germany 5 Klinikum Stuttgart Olgahospital, Pediatrics 5 - Oncology, Hematology, Immunology, Stuttgart, Germany * Denotes equal contribution # Shared senior authorship Received: December 21, 2011; Accepted: December 23, 2011; Published: December 24, 2011; Keywords: Osteosarcoma, cysteine-rich intestinal protein 1, CRIP1, prognosis, metastases Correspondence: Daniel Baumhoer, email: // // Abstract Predicting the clinical course of osteosarcoma patients is a crucial prerequisite for a better treatment stratification in these highly aggressive neoplasms of bone. In search of new and reliable biomarkers we recently identified cysteine-rich intestinal protein 1 (CRIP1) to have significant prognostic impact in gastric cancer and therefore decided to investigate its role also in osteosarcoma. For this purpose we analyzed 223 pretherapeutic and well characterized osteosarcoma samples for their immunohistochemical expression of CRIP1 and correlated our findings with clinico-pathological parameters including follow‑up, systemic spread and response to chemotherapy. Interestingly and contrarily to gastric cancer, we found CRIP1 expression more frequently in patients with long‑term survival (10-year survival 73% in positive vs. 54% in negative cases, p = 0.0433) and without metastases (p = 0.0108) indicating a favorable prognostic effect. CRIP1 therefore seems to represent a promising new biomarker in osteosarcoma patients which should be considered for a prospective validation.