Patients and Samples

This study was conducted ethically in accordance with the World Medical Association Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the Third Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University Ethic Committee. Here we enrolled two independent retrospective cohorts. The first cohort was only used for RT-qPCR analyses and contained 32 paired fresh-frozen GC samples and adjacent noncancerous samples. The second cohort was used for IHC detection and survival analyses, comprising 128 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) GC samples from patients whose follow-up data were intact. All diagnoses were based on histopathological tests after tumor resection. All participants in the two cohorts signed the written informed consent documents.