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High expression of survivin predicts poor prognosis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma following radiotherapy

  • Research Article
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Tumor Biology

Abstract

Radiotherapy is one of the main treatments for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, but there are still no biomarkers to differentiate patients who will benefit from radiation. Although treatment with a combination of radiotherapy with chemotherapy, and/or surgery improves the prognosis of patients, no biomarkers can distinguish between the responses obtained with the combined therapies. Therefore, in this study, we selected patients treated with radiotherapy alone to evaluate survivin as a predictor for radiotherapy. One hundred two biopsy samples collected by endoscopy were immunostained by survivin antibody. Positive staining for survivin was obtained in 60.8% tumor samples. Survivin expression, metastasis, and clinical stage correlated significantly with overall survival. In multivariate analysis, survivin was an independent prognostic factor for predicting overall survival of patients with esophageal cancer. Moreover, in esophageal cancer cell lines, overexpression of survivin reduced the percentage of cell death induced by radiation. Our data indicate that survivin could be a potential predictor to define those patients with esophageal squamous carcinoma who would benefit from radiotherapy.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Professor Mingrong Wang for the EC9706 cell line. This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation (30370732, 81021061), Capital Foundation for Medical Research and Development (2007–2022), National Nonprofit Institute Research Grant of CAMS (JK2007B11) and 863 Project Grant 2006AA02A403, People's Republic of China.

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Author notes

  1. Qifeng Wang

    Present address: Department of Radiotherapy, Sichuan Cancer Hospital, Chengdu, 610041, People’s Republic of China

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratory of Cell and Molecular Biology, State Key Laboratory of Molecular Oncology, Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, 17 Panjiayuan Nanli, Beijing, 100021, People’s Republic of China

    Hongxia Zhu, Chenfei Hu, Lanping Quan, Mei Liu & Ningzhi Xu

  2. Department of Radiation Oncology, Cancer Institute and Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing, 100021, People’s Republic of China

    Qifeng Wang, Wencheng Zhang & Zefen Xiao

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  1. Hongxia Zhu
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Correspondence to Hongxia Zhu or Zefen Xiao.

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Zhu, H., Wang, Q., Hu, C. et al. High expression of survivin predicts poor prognosis in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma following radiotherapy. Tumor Biol. 32, 1147–1153 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-011-0217-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-011-0217-y

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