Increased expression of CIP2A in cholangiocarcinoma and correlation with poor prognosis.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: To explore the expression of cancerous inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) in human cholangiocarcinoma tissues and adjacent non-cancerous normal bile duct tissues, and to investigate the clinicopathological signinficance of the CIP2A protein in cholangiocarcinoma patients.

METHODOLOGY

Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression of CIP2A protein in 57 cases (35 men and 22 women) of cholangiocarcinoma samples and 23 cases of para-cancerous normal bile duct samples. The results were analyzed with clinicopathological patameters and overall median survival time.

RESULTS

The positive rate of CIP2A protein expression in cholangiocarcinoma tissues was significantly higher than para-cancerous normal bile duct tissues. The expression of CIP2A was found to be not correlated with age, gender, smoking, grading, staging, lymph node metastasis, tumor site and hepatitis B virus (HBV) (p>0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the overall survival time in patients with positive expression of CIP2A protein were shorter than in patients with negative expression of CIP2A (long rank=5.180, p=0.023). COX regression analysis implied that expression of CIP2A protein was an independent prognostic factor for cholangiocarcinoma patients (p<0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

CIP2A is overexpressed in human cholangiocarcinoma tissues, and overexpression of CIP2A correlates with poor prognosis. CIP2A expression may be a potential marker for biological malignancy.