KIF-2C expression is correlated with poor prognosis of operable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma male patients

Abstract

// <![CDATA[ $('.header-date').hide();$('#titleAuthors').hide();$('#abstractHeader').hide(); // ]]> Hao Duan1, Xu Zhang1,2, Fei-Xiang Wang4, Mu-Yan Cai3, Guo-Wei Ma1, Hong Yang1, 2, Jian-Hua Fu1, 2, Zi-Hui Tan1, Xia-Yu Fu1, Qi-Long Ma1, Xin-Ye Wang1, Peng Lin1,2 1Department of Thoracic Oncology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou 510060, Guangdong Province, China 2Guangdong Esophageal Cancer Research Institute, Guangzhou 510060, Guangdong Province, China 3Department of Pathology, Sun Yat-Sen University Cancer Center, Guangzhou 510060, Guangdong Province, China 4Department of Thoracic Oncology, Cancer Center of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou 510095, Guangdong Province, China Correspondence to: Peng Lin, email: sd847713090@gmail.com Keywords: esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, KIF-2C, prognosis Received: March 13, 2016 Accepted: August 09, 2016 Published: August 22, 2016 ABSTRACT To determine the prognostic significance of Kinesin family member 2C (KIF-2C) expression in patients with operable esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), we conducted an immunohistochemical analysis of KIF-2C expression in 415 surgically resected primary tumor tissues and 40 adjacent non-cancerous tissues from patients with operable ESCC. The median duration of postoperative follow-up was 76.0 months. Higher KIF-2C expression was associated with significantly increased risks of higher pathologic tumor (pT) status (P=0.038) and poorer tumor differentiation (P=0.022). For the entire cohort, KIF-2C expression was not an independent factor significantly associated with overall survival (OS) (P=0.097) or disease-free survival (DFS) (P=0.152). In female patients, KIF-2C expression had no effect on OS (P=0.880) and DFS (P=0.864). However, OS (hazard ratio (HR)=1.480, P=0.013) and DFS (HR=1.418, P=0.024) were worse for male patients with high KIF-2C expression compared with male patients with low KIF-2C expression. Moreover, the OS and DFS of male patients with high KIF-2C expression were also significantly shorter compared with female patients with low KIF-2C expression (P=0.022, P=0.029) and female patients with high KIF-2C expression (P=0.014, P=0.018). Based on these findings, KIF-2C expression in tumor tissues promises to serve as an independent prognostic marker for male, but not female, patients with operable ESCC. Prognosis was worse for male patients with high KIF-2C expression compared with patients with the same pathologic tumor-node-metastasis (pTNM) stage.