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Strong expression of survivin is associated with positive response to radiotherapy and improved overall survival in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients
Author(s) -
Farnebo Lovisa,
Tiefenböck Katharina,
Ansell Anna,
Thunell Lena K.,
Garvin Stina,
Roberg Karin
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
international journal of cancer
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.475
H-Index - 234
eISSN - 1097-0215
pISSN - 0020-7136
DOI - 10.1002/ijc.28200
Subject(s) - survivin , radiation therapy , head and neck squamous cell carcinoma , medicine , oncology , single nucleotide polymorphism , cancer research , head and neck cancer , malignancy , immunohistochemistry , cancer , biology , gene , genotype , biochemistry
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is a malignancy that is associated with severe mortality despite advances in therapy. Today's standard treatment most commonly includes radiotherapy, often combined with chemotherapy or surgery. There are so far no established biomarkers to predict response to radiation, and thus the aim of this study was to investigate a series of markers that could potentially identify HNSCC patients who would benefit from radiotherapy. The selected markers, both proteins (epidermal growth factor receptor, survivin and p53), and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the genes of XRCC3, XRCC1, XPC, XPD, MDM2, p53 and FGFR4 were correlated to the response to radiotherapy and overall survival. Investigations were performed on pretreatment tumor biopsies from patients classified as responders or nonresponders to radiotherapy. Protein expression was examined using immunohistochemistry and the genotyping of specific SNPs was analyzed using PCR‐RFLP or pyrosequencing. We found that survivin expression was significantly stronger in the responder group ( p = 0.003) and that patients with a strong survivin expression had a significantly better overall survival ( p < 0.001). Moreover, downregulation of survivin by siRNA in two HNSCC cell lines significantly decreased their sensitivity to radiation. Among the SNPs analyzed, patients with the XPD Lys751Gln SNP had a significantly shorter overall survival ( p = 0.048), and patients with the FGFR4 Gly388Arg SNP had a significantly longer overall survival ( p = 0.010). In conclusion, our results suggest that survivin plays an important role in the response to radiotherapy and may be a useful marker for predicting radiotherapy response in patients with HNSCC.