Role of Frizzled receptor expression on patients’ survival with gastrointestinal cancers: A systematic review with meta-analysis

Frizzled receptors (FZD) play a pivotal role in the initiation and progression of a wide array of cancers. Dysregulated expression of FZD receptors is correlated with higher metastasis and invasive potential, as well as short survival in many malignancies. In this meta-analysis, we aimed to verify the prognostic value of FZD receptor expression on patients’ survival with different types of gastrointestinal (GI) cancers, including gastric, colorectal, and esophageal cancers.

A systematic search was performed using PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science from 2000 to November 2020. Fourteen studies, including 2997 patients met our inclusion criteria, in which nine articles were considered FZD7 while the rest were about other FZD members. The fixed-effect model was used to estimate the pooled hazard ratio (HR) and the 5-year overall survival (OS) rate. We used the Newcastle-Ottawa scale of cohort articles to determine the quality of included studies.

The results showed that high expression of FZD receptors is associated with the poor survival in patients with GI cancers (HR= 1.83, 95% CI: 1.5–2.17). Moreover, multivariate analysis indicated that FZD receptors could be considered as an independent prognostic factor (HR = 1.76, 95% CI: 1.37–2.16).

According to our results, overexpression of FZD receptors predicts a poor prognosis in patients with GI cancers and could be used as a useful therapeutic target.