Prognostic Significance Of SATB1 And STAB2 Expression In Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Background and PurposeEsophageal squamous cell carcinoma is very common in digestive malignant tumors. Because of its insidious onset, the patients who have obvious symptoms have developed into the most advanced stage and lost the opportunity to perform radical surgery. Moreover, since the esophageal cancer has the features of lymphatic and blood metastasis, resisting the radiotherapy and chemotherapy, so esophageal cancer has a poor prognosis. At present, although there have been a lot of targeted anti-cancer drugs into the clinic, but the prognosis of esophageal cancer has not significantly improved. Therefore, the researches about formation,development, invasion and metastasis mechanism of esophageal cancer should be done quickly. SATB1 and SATB2 are AT-rich sequence binding protein specific family members. They can attach the nuclear matrix attachment regions in cells,and then changing the cell chromatin structure and regulating gene expression in cells, which affect many tumor biological behaviors. It has been confirmed that high expression and low expression of SATB1 and SATB2 are associated with poor prognosis in patients with esophageal cancer. However, whether the role of SATB1 and SATB2 in assessing the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer has correlation is until unclear. We take it as research direction and hope to give a contribution for the prognosis of esophageal cancer.MethodsImmunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of SATB1 and STAB2 protein in 233 cases of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.Western blotting was used to detect the expression of SATB1 protein in 10 cases of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Quantificational real-time polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR) was used to detect the expression of SATB1 mRNA in 10 cases of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. After getting results, we do a statistical analysis combining with clinical, pathological and prognostic factors of patients.ResultsImmunohistochemistry showed that SATB1 highly expressed in 113 cases and lowly expressed in 120 cases.SATB2 highly expressed in 123 cases and lowly expressed in 110 cases.The expression levels of SATB1 and SATB2 were significantly correlated(P <0.05), while the expression level of SATB1 was not correlated with age, sex, location of tumor in the esophagus, histological grade,clinical stage, tumor local conditions and lymph node metastasis(P> 0.05).Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that SATB1 positive or not is an independent prognostic factor in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma specimenswhose SATB2 was negative. Lymph node metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was an independent prognostic factor too. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that SATB1 positive patients have a shorter overall survival in SATB2 negative patients of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Western blotting and RT-PCR showed the expression of protein and mRNA levels of SATB1 was more than carcinoma adjacent tissue in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissue.Conclusions(1)The expression of protein and mRNA levels of SATB1 is more than carcinoma adjacent tissue in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissue.(2) The expression of SATB1 protein is negatively correlated with the expression of SATB2 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissues.(3)SATB1 positive or not is an independent prognostic factor in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in SATB2 negative specimens. Lymph node metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma is an independent prognostic factor too.(4) SATB1 positive patients have a shorter overall survival in SATB2 negative patients of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.