Affiliations: [a] First Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Hippocration Hospital, Medical University of Athens, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece | [b] Department of Pathology, Medical University of Athens, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece | [c] Laboratory of Surgical Research, 1st Department of Propaedeutic Surgery, Hippocration Hospital, Medical University of Athens, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece | [d] Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Aris I. Giotakis, First Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Hippocration Hospital, %****␣cbm-25-cbm181772_temp.tex␣Line␣25␣**** Medical University of Athens, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Vas. Sofias 114, Athens, 11527, Greece. Tel.: +302 132 088 030; E-mail: arisgiotakis@gmail.com.
Abstract: BACKGROUND: Laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) constitutes the third most frequent head and neck cancer. Several tissue biomarkers have been studied for their prognostic significance in LSCC. OBJECTIVE: To investigate the prognostic significance of BCL2L12, a new member of the BCL2 family, in primary LSCC along with well-examined biomarkers such as BCL2 and BAX. METHODS: Cancerous tissue specimens of patients with primary LSCC were collected during 2005 and 2012 as pretreatment tissue biopsy. The specimens were immunohistochemically evaluated for the protein expression of BCL2L12, BCL2 and BAX. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and Cox proportional hazard regression models were performed to evaluate prognosis. RESULTS: In the study cohort of 78 patients with primary LSCC, Kaplan-Meier survival curves demonstrated that advanced-stage LSCC patients with BCL2L12-positive tumors had significantly higher OS time in comparison with advanced-stage LSCC patients with BCL2L12-negative tumors (p= 0.014). Also, advanced-stage LSCC patients with BCL2L12-positive tumors had significantly lower risk of death from LSCC compared to advanced-stage LSCC patients with BCL2L12-negative tumors (HR = 0.228, 95%CI = 0.063–0.833, p= 0.025). CONCLUSIONS:BCL2L12 protein expression could be used as a favorable prognostic tissue biomarker in patients with primary advanced-stage LSCC. On the contrary, BCL2 and BAX did not correlate with prognosis in patients with primary LSCC.
