Abstract
Purpose
To detect the expression levels of ubiquitin-specific protease 22 (USP22) in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and to correlate it with clinicopathologic and prognostic data.
Methods
The immunoreactivity of USP22 protein was analyzed in 157 pathologically characterized ESCC tissues by immunohistochemistry. All statistical analyses were performed with SPSS statistical software to evaluate the association of USP22 protein with clinicopathologic factors and survival.
Results
High expression of USP22 protein was detected in 50.96 % of 157 ESCC tissues and significantly associated with invasion depth, lymph node metastasis, pathologic stage and tumor relapse (P < 0.05, respectively). Univariate survival analysis showed that patients with high expression of USP22 protein had a significantly poorer 5-year disease-specific survival (P = 0.002), and multivariate survival analysis showed that high expression of USP22 protein was an independent prognosticator for unfavorable disease-specific survival (P = 0.039). Further survival analysis stratified by pathologic stage demonstrated that high expression of USP22 protein significantly predicted unfavorable clinical outcome (P = 0.029) among patients with pathologic stage IIb–III diseases.
Conclusion
USP22 protein plays an essential role in ESCC progression and has clinical potentials not only as a promising biomarker to identify the subgroup of patients with more aggressive tumors and poor prognostic potential but also as an attractively therapeutic target for ESCC.
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Acknowledgments
This project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81172161 to Zhou Wang).
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We declare that we have no conflict of interest.
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Li, J., Wang, Z. & Li, Y. USP22 nuclear expression is significantly associated with progression and unfavorable clinical outcome in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol 138, 1291–1297 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-012-1191-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00432-012-1191-5