West Asia Organization for Cancer Prevention (WAOCP), APOCP's West Asia Chapter. Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 1513-7368 23 5 2022 05 01 Clinical Significance of TRIM44 Expression in Patients with Gastric Cancer 1725 1731 90124 10.31557/APJCP.2022.23.5.1725 EN Ladan Goshayeshi Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, School of Medicine, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. Jalil Afshar Department of Biochemistry, Neyshabur Branch, Islamic Azad University, Neyshabur, Iran. Hassan Mehrad-Majd Cancer Molecular Pathology Research Center, Mashhad University of Medical Sciences, Mashhad, Iran. 0000-0002-8745-6558 Journal Article 2022 01 24 Background: Despite the tremendous efforts in finding a valuable markers for risk stratifying gastric cancer (GC) patients; still, management of this cancer faces multiple obstacles. Given this, we designed a study to explore the possible relationship between the tripartite motif-containing 44 (TRIM44) gene expression, and the outcome of the GC patients. Methods: The real-time quantitative PCR method was used to evaluate the mRNA expression level of TRIM44, and β-catenin in fresh primary tumor and adjacent normal tissues collected from 40 GC patients. The Pearson’s correlation test, Kaplan–Meier method, and Cox proportional-hazards regression were performed to examine the association of TRIM44 expression with some clinicopathological data and the patients’ overall survival (OS). Results: The expression level of both TRIM44 and β-catenin was remarkably higher in GC tissues than in normal tissues (Fold change=1.71, p=0.004). In subgroup analysis based on the TRIM44 expression, pateints with high TRIM44 expression level exhibited poorer overall survival (HR = 1.46, 95% CI: 1.07-1.98, p=0.016). More strikingly, a positive correlation was also found between the expression of TRIM44 and β-catenin in GC, indicating that TRIM44 might exert its oncogenic activities probably through the β-catenin axis. Conclusion: This study highlighted the potent value of TRIM44 as an independent prognostic factor in gastric cancer and shed light on the probable interplay between this tripartite motif-containing protein and β-catenin. However, further investigations, especially with a larger sample size, are required to study the effect of TRIM44 in GC more precisely.  https://journal.waocp.org/article_90124_466d3080485444d7387dcf6d07fd3d29.pdf