Overexpression of SCC‐S2 correlates with lymph node metastasis and poor prognosis in patients with non‐small‐cell lung cancer

Abstract

The objective of the current study was to investigate the expression pattern and clinicopathological significance of SCC-S2 in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The expression profile of SCC-S2 in NSCLC tissues and adjacent noncancerous lung tissues was detected by real-time RT-PCR, western blot analysis, and immunohistochemistry. In 25 lung cancer tissues examined, 18 (72%) of them exhibited stronger levels of SCC-S2 mRNA compared with their corresponding normal tissues. SCC-S2 protein level was up-regulated in cancerous lung tissues compared to adjacent normal tissue. Moreover, the expression level of SCC-S2 in 93 archived NSCLC tissues was measured by immunohistochemical staining. SCC-S2 was found to be overexpressed in 71 of 93 (76.3%) human lung cancer samples and correlated with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.0181), p-TNM stage (P = 0.0042), Ki-67 expression (P = 0.0028), and poor survival (P = 0.012). In addition, depleting SCC-S2 expression by small-interfering RNA inhibited growth and invasion in lung cell lines. These results indicate that SCC-S2 plays an important role in NSCLC and might be a useful therapeutic target of NSCLC.