Evaluation of toll-like receptors as prognostic biomarkers in gastric cancer: high tissue TLR5 predicts a better outcome

Toll-like receptors (TLRs), key proteins in innate immunity, appear to contribute to the inflammatory environment in carcinogenesis. Thus, we aimed to evaluate the tissue expressions of TLR1, TLR2, TLR4, TLR5, TLR7, and TLR9 as potential prognostic biomarkers in gastric cancer. We applied immunohistochemistry to study tissue samples from 313 patients operated on for gastric adenocarcinoma between 2000 and 2009 at the Department of Surgery, Helsinki University Hospital, Finland. A high expression of each TLR studied associated with the high expression of each other and with the intestinal-type histology (p Peer reviewe