High expression of Naa10p associates with lymph node metastasis and predicts favorable prognosis of oral squamous cell carcinoma

N-a-Acetyltransferase 10 protein (Naa10p) is a potential prognostic biomarker and a modulator of several types of cancer. Despite the efforts to elucidate the relationship between Naa10p expression and clinical prognosis, little is known about its expression and role in human oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). In this study, we firstly detected the mRNA and protein levels of Naa10p in 10 paired OSCC tissue samples and found Naa10p was frequently overexpressed in the tumor tissues of patients with OSCC. Further detection by immunohistochemistry was used to examine Naa10p expression in 124 OSCC tumor specimens by tissue microarray (TMA), and a relative high level of Naa10p protein expression was found in 98 out of 124 cases (79.03 %). Additional analyses illustrated that Naa10p expression inversely correlated with clinical stage (p = 0.047), degree of lymph node status (p = 0.020), differentiation (p = 0.022), and recurrence (p = 0.016) of patients with OSCC. The survival analysis showed that patients with Naa10p-positive expression had a better prognosis for disease-free survival (DFS) or overall survival (OS) than those with Naa10p-negative expression (p = 0.003 for both). Furthermore, we assessed the effect of Naa10p knockdown on motility of oral cancer cells in vitro, and the results showed that Naa10p inhibit cell wound healing, migration, and invasion. In summary, our study illustrated that the expression of Naa10p had a potential value for predicting the progression of OSCC and prognosis of OSCC patients.