Background & objective: Survivin, a new described member of the family of apoptosis inhibitory proteins (IAP), is undetectable in normal tissue of adults, but abundantly expressed in a variety of human malignancies. This study was designed to examine the expression of Survivin in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, analyze the relationships between the expression of Survivin and prognostic factors including age, gender, clinical stage, T stage, N stage, classification, histology and recurrence, to investigate its significance on prognosis.
Methods: Clinical information and paraffin- embedded tumor samples of 81 cases laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) patients, who were treated at Cancer Center of Sun Yat-sen University between 1997 and 1998, were collected. Tissue chip was made, and SP method was performed to analyze Survivin expression in tumor tissue and adjacent normal laryngeal mucosa. SPSS 10.0 software was used. Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis, and log-rank test was used for data analysis; multivariate analysis was carried out using Cox proportional hazard model.
Results: The overall 5-year survival rate for patients with laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma in this study was 58.33%. The over-expression rate of Survivin in tumor tissue and adjacent normal laryngeal tissue were 50.62%, 0%, respectively (P< 0.05). The positive Survivin expression group(5-year overall surivial rate: 22.06%) had a worse prognosis than that of negative group (5- year overall survival rate: 92.33%)(P< 0.05). The univariate analysis showed that clinical stage, T stage, N stage, histology grade, recurrence, and Survivin expression were the most important prognostic factors (P< 0.05). The Chi(2) test results showed that the expression of survivin was correlated with clinical stage, T stage, N stage, histology grade and recurrence (P< 0.05); Multivariate analysis results showed that clinical stage, survivin expression, and recurrence were independent prognosis factors on survival in LSCC patients.
Conclusions: The expression of Survivin is an important biological factor affecting the prognosis; Tissue chip method can be simply and efficiently used in large scale of retrospective study in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma.