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BMC Cancer

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Open Access 01-12-2014 | Research article

URG4 overexpression is correlated with cervical cancer progression and poor prognosis in patients with early-stage cervical cancer

Authors: Lan Zhang, He Huang, Longjuan Zhang, Teng Hou, Shu Wu, Qidan Huang, Libing Song, Jihong Liu

Published in: BMC Cancer | Issue 1/2014

Abstract

Background

Upregulator of cell proliferation 4 (URG4) has been implicated in the oncogenesis of certain cancers. However, the correlation between URG4 expression and clinicopathological significance in human cancer remains unclear. Therefore, this study investigated its expression and clinicopathological significance in cervical cancer patients.

Methods

URG4 expression was examined using quantitative PCR (qPCR) and western blotting in normal cervical epithelial cells, cervical cancer cells, and eight matched pairs of cervical cancer tissues and adjacent noncancerous tissues from the same patient. In addition, immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to examine URG4 expression in paraffin-embedded tissues from 167 cervical cancer patients (FIGO stages Ib1-IIa2). Statistical analyses were performed to evaluate associations between URG4 expression and prognostic and diagnostic factors.

Results

URG4 was significantly upregulated in the cervical cancer cell lines and tissues compared with the normal cells and adjacent noncancerous cervical tissues. IHC revealed high URG4 expression in 59 out of the 167 (35.13%) cervical cancer specimens. Its expression was significantly correlated with clinical stage (P < 0.0001), tumour size (P = 0.012), T classification (P = 0.023), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.001) and vaginal involvement (P = 0.002). Patients with high URG4 expression, particularly those who received concurrent chemotherapy and radiotherapy (P < 0.0001), showed a shorter overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) compared to those with the low expression of this protein. Multivariate analysis revealed that URG4 expression is an independent prognostic factor for cervical cancer patients.

Conclusions

Our results demonstrated that elevated URG4 protein expression is associated with a poor outcome in patients with early-stage cervical cancer. URG4 may be a novel prognostic marker and therapeutic target for the treatment of cervical cancer.

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The pre-publication history for this paper can be accessed here:http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2407/14/885/prepub

Title: URG4 overexpression is correlated with cervical cancer progression and poor prognosis in patients with early-stage cervical cancer
Authors: Lan Zhang
He Huang
Longjuan Zhang
Teng Hou
Shu Wu
Qidan Huang
Libing Song
Jihong Liu
Publication date: 01-12-2014
Publisher: BioMed Central
Published in: BMC Cancer / Issue 1/2014
Electronic ISSN: 1471-2407
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2407-14-885

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