Abstract:
Objective To investigate the expression levels of retinoblastoma-binding protein 7(RBBP7) and pre-B-cell leukemia homeobox transcription factor-1 (PBX1) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and their correlation with the prognosis of ESCC patients treated with radiotherapy.
Methods The expression levels of RBBP7 and PBX1 in ESCC tissues of 175 ESCC patients treated with radiotherapy were detected using immunohistochemistry. The correlation between RBBP7 and PBX1, and between the two and prognosis of patients were analyzed.
Results The results of immunohistochemical staining showed that RBBP7 was highly expressed in the nucleus of ESCC, and PBX1 was expressed in cytoplasm and nucleus. There were 91 positive and 84 negative expressions of RBBP7 in pathological tissue samples of 175 ESCC patients, and the PBX1 expression was positive in 87 cases, and negative in 88 cases. The results of Spearman analysis showed that there was a significantly negative correlation between RBBP7 and PBX1 expression (P < 0.01). The difference of the median survival time between patients with positive and negative expression of RBBP7 was statistically significant (P < 0.05), while there was no statistically significant difference in the median survival time between patients with positive and negative expression of PBX1 (P > 0.05). The results of multivariate COX regression analysis showed that RBBP7 and whether chemotherapy was combined were the independent influencing factors of overall survival (P < 0.05).
Conclusions RBBP7 is helpful to predict the prognosis of ESCC patients treated with radiotherapy, and may be a potential target for radiotherapy.