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Low expression of IGFBP-3 predicts poor prognosis in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

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Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that insulin-like growth factor binding protein-3 (IGFBP-3) acts as a tumor suppressor in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). The present study was designed to investigate the clinical and prognostic significance of IGFBP-3 in ESCC patients. In this study, IGFBP-3 was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in paraffin-embedded tissues from 110 ESCC patients, of which 110 were from primary cancer sites and 56 from matched adjacent non-malignant sites. Differences in IGFBP-3 expression and clinical characteristics were compared by χ2 test. Correlations between prognostic outcomes and with IGFBP-3 expression were investigated using Kaplan–Meier analysis and the Cox proportional hazards model. Among adjacent non-malignant tissues, 83.9% of individual tissue staining was scored as either high for IGFBP-3. However, among ESCC cases, only 51.8% of the cancer tissues were scored as high IGFBP-3 expression. In addition, IGFBP-3 expression inversely correlated with pathological classification (P < 0.05 for T, N, and M classifications) and clinical staging (P = 0.006). Furthermore, patients with higher levels of IGFBP-3 had prolonged overall survival (P < 0.001). In conclusion, reduced IGFBP-3 expression may be a risk factor for advanced clinicopathological classification and poor patient survival. These findings suggest that IGFBP-3 may serve as a useful marker for the prognostic evaluation of ESCC patients.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Major State Basic Research Program (973 project) of China (2010CB912802 and 2010CB529401). We would like to thank Dr. Qiao-Qiao Li for her valuable comments during the design of this study.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Radiotherapy, Cancer Center, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, No 651, Dongfeng road east, Guangzhou, 510060, China

    Lei Zhao, Li-Ru He, Rui Zhang, Mian Xi & Meng-Zhong Liu

  2. State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China, Cancer Center, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China

    Lei Zhao, Li-Ru He, Rui Zhang, Mu-Yan Cai, Yi-Ji Liao, Dong Qian, Mian Xi, Yi-Xin Zeng, Dan Xie & Meng-Zhong Liu

  3. Departments of Pathology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou, China

    Mu-Yan Cai

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  1. Lei Zhao
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Correspondence to Meng-Zhong Liu.

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Zhao, L., He, LR., Zhang, R. et al. Low expression of IGFBP-3 predicts poor prognosis in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Med Oncol 29, 2669–2676 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-011-0133-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12032-011-0133-4

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