Furthermore, high-expression of Ecto-5'-nucleotidase was obviously associated with advanced clinical stage, deep tumor invasion, lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis in gastric cancer patients.
Recent studies have shown that Abs that target the cell-surface enzyme CD73 (ecto-5'-nucleotidase) reduce growth of primary tumors and metastasis in syngenic mice by inhibiting the catalytic activity of CD73, and thus increasing the activity of cytotoxic T lymphocytes.
However, in patients with non-metastatic disease who underwent ostensibly curative surgery, the expression of REG alone and co-expression of REG with PAP had a highly significantly adverse effect on survival.