Abstract:Objectives To explore the clinical significance and expression of IMP3 in gastric adenocarcinoma (GAC). Methods Immuno-histochemical technique was adopted to detect the expression level of IMP3 protein in 92 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma, 92 cases of adjacent tumor tissues, and 16 case of metastatic 1ymph nodes. Additionally, the relationship between the expression of IMP3 and the clinical prognostic factors was analyzed. Results IMP3 positive expression rates were 76.1%, 50.0% and 87.5% in the gastric adenocarcinoma, adjacent tumor tissues and 16 case of metastatic 1ymph nodes, respectively. IMP3 positive expression rate in gastric adenocarcinoma and metastatic 1ymph nodes was significantly higher than that in the adjacent tumor tissues (P < 0.05). The high-positive expression rate of IMP3 in metastatic 1ymph nodes was higher than that in gastric adenocarcinoma. The expression rate of IMP3 was closely related to Ki-67 protein, stage, the lymphatic metastasis and serosal invasion (P < 0.05). Survival curve shows that the disease-free survival and 5-year survival rates of the patients with IMP3 high-expression were obviously lower than those of patients with IMP3 low-expression (P < 0.05). Importantly, serosal invasion, high stage, IMP3 high-expression rate was an independent risk factor for the prognosis of gastric adenocarcinoma [Hl^R=1.614 (95% CI: 1.032, 2.523), P = 0.036]. Conclusions Detection of IMP3 protein expression level has important clinical significance in the diagnosis and prognosis evaluation of GAC, and is expected to become a new marker of GAC.