Clinical Significance of Tumor Markers for Advanced Thymic Carcinoma: A Retrospective Analysis from the NEJ023 Study

Abstract

The optimal tumor marker for predicting the prognosis of advanced thymic carcinoma (ATC) remains unclear. We conducted a multi-institutional retrospective study of patients with ATC. A total of 286 patients were treated with chemotherapy. Clinicopathological information, including serum tumor markers, was evaluated to determine the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS). The carcinoembryonic antigen, cytokeratin-19 fragment, squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) antigen, progastrin-releasing peptide, neuron-specific enolase (NSE), and alpha-fetoprotein levels were evaluated. In the Kaplan–Meier analysis, the OS was significantly shorter in the patients with elevated NSE levels than in those with normal NSE levels (median, 20.3 vs. 36.8 months; log-rank test p = 0.029; hazard ratio (HR), 1.55; 95% confidence interval (CI), 1.05–2.31 (Cox proportional hazard model)); a similar tendency regarding the PFS was observed (median, 6.4 vs. 11.0 months; log-rank test p = 0.001; HR, 2.04; 95% CI, 1.31–3.18). No significant differences in the OS and PFS were observed among the other tumor markers. In both univariate and multivariate analyses of the patients with SCC only, the NSE level was associated with the OS and PFS. Thus, the NSE level may be a prognostic tumor marker for thymic carcinoma, regardless of histology.