Prognostic value of TIGAR and LC3B protein expression in nasopharyngeal carcinoma

• Main Authors: Wei M, Peng J, Wu P, Chen P, Yang H, Cui Y, Yang L
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dove Medical Press 2018-11-01
• Series: Cancer Management and Research
• Subjects: Nasopharyngeal carcinoma; TIGAR; LC3B; Autophagy; Prognosis
• Online Access: https://www.dovepress.com/prognostic-value-of-tigar-and-lc3b-protein-expression-in-nasopharyngea-peer-reviewed-article-CMAR

Min Wei,* Jinxia Peng,* Peng Wu, Ping Chen, Hongru Yang, Yongxia Cui, Linglin Yang Department of Oncology, The Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University, Luzhou 646000, People’s Republic of China *These authors contributed equally to this work Purpose: Autophagy, the process responsible for degrading cytoplasmic organelles to sustain cellular metabolism, has been associated with cancer initiation and progression. As TP53-induced glycolysis and apoptosis regulator (TIGAR) is among the important genes that can regulate autophagy, we aimed to investigate the correlation between the expression levels of TIGAR and the autophagy-related protein microtubule-associated protein 1 light chain 3 (LC3B), as well as their association with clinical outcomes, in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) patients.Methods: We detected the expressions of TIGAR and LC3B in 182 NPC tissue samples via immunohistochemical staining.Results: A significant correlation between TIGAR and LC3B expressions was identified (P=0.045). Moreover, survival analysis showed that TIGAR– or LC3B+ expression was associated with improved overall survival, local regional failure-free survival, distant failure-free survival, and failure-free survival rates, compared with TIGAR+ or LC3B– expression, respectively. Meanwhile, when combining TIGAR with LC3B expression in terms of prognostic value, patients with TIGAR+/LC3B– expression were significantly disadvantaged with regard to overall survival, local regional failure-free survival , distant failure-free survival, and failure-free survival compared with other groups based on the log-rank test and Cox regression analyses (all P<0.05).Conclusion: TIGAR and LC3B may be novel biomarkers for predicting the prognosis of NPC patients and could be utilized as potential targets for future therapeutics aimed at treating NPC patients. Keywords: nasopharyngeal carcinoma, TIGAR, LC3B, autophagy, prognosis