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RICTOR expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and its clinical significance

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Abstract

Esophageal cancer is one of the most common malignant tumors in the world, and its incidence is the eighth highest; meanwhile, its fatality rate is the sixth highest. The PI3K/Akt/mTOR signaling pathway plays a required role in human cancer, including cell survival, metabolism and migration. As a kind of important scaffold protein in mTORC2, RICTOR has showed over-expression in several malignancies like melanoma and endometrial cancer. In this research, we selected 201 cases of paraffin specimens from patients diagnosed as esophageal squamous cell carcinoma after surgical treatment and then estimated the RICTOR expression in each esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissue by using the immunohistochemical streptavidin–peroxidase technique. Then, we analyzed the association among the clinicopathological parameters, the prognosis and the expression of RICTOR. Eventually, we found that the percentage of RICTOR-positive expression in 201 ESCC samples is 70.6% (142/201) and the figure for RICTOR-negative or RICTOR-doubtful-positive expression is 29.4% (59/201). RICTOR expression positively correlated with ESCC patients’ AJCC stage (P = 0.011) and showed an opposite trend with survival (P = 0.007). Based on univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analysis, RICTOR-positive expression, AJCC staging III or IV and nodal metastasis are prognostic factors and the former two are independent risk factors for ESCC. In conclusion, our study showed potential that targeting RICTOR may represent new effective inhibitors for treating ESCC.

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Abbreviations

EC:

Esophageal cancer

ESCC:

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

PI3K:

Phosphorinosmode-3-kinase

Akt/PKB:

Protein kinase B

mTOR:

Mammalian target of rapamycin

mTORC1:

Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1

mTORC2:

Mammalian target of rapamycin complex 2

AJCC:

American Joint Committee on Cancer

IHC:

Immunohistochemistry

SP:

Streptavidin–peroxidase

PBS:

Phosphate-buffered saline

K–M:

Kaplan–Meier

HR:

Hazard ratio

CI:

Confidence interval

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    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Department of Oncology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, 218 Jixi Road, Hefei, 230022, Anhui Province, China

      Wei-Jia Jiang, Ru-Xue Feng, Jia-Tao Liu, Lu-Lu Fan, Hua Wang & Guo-Ping Sun

    2. Department of Pharmacy, The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, Hefei, Anhui Province, China

      Jia-Tao Liu

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    1. Wei-Jia Jiang
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    2. Ru-Xue Feng
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    3. Jia-Tao Liu
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    4. Lu-Lu Fan
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    5. Hua Wang
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    6. Guo-Ping Sun
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    Corresponding authors

    Correspondence to Hua Wang or Guo-Ping Sun.

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    We declare we have no commercial or associative conflicts of interest related to this work.

    Ethical approval

    This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of The First Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University. The results in this paper have never been published before by myself, by any co-author, or by others. All the participants provided an informed consent which was in line with the Declaration of Helsinki. There is no conflict of interest statement with all the references.

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    Wei-Jia Jiang and Ru-Xue Feng have contributed equally to this work.

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    Cite this article

    Jiang, WJ., Feng, RX., Liu, JT. et al. RICTOR expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and its clinical significance. Med Oncol 34, 32 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-017-0894-5

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-017-0894-5

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