The Prognostic Significance of Histone Demethylase UTX in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma.

The dysregulation of the ubiquitously transcribed TPR gene on the X chromosome () has been reported to be involved in the oncogenesis of several types of cancers. However, the expression and significance of in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains largely undetermined. Immunohistochemistry was performed in 106 ESCC patients, and correlated with clinicopathological features and survival. The functional role of in ESCC cells was determined by -mediated siRNA. Univariate analyses showed that high expression was associated with superior overall survival (OS, = 0.011) and disease-free survival (DFS, = 0.01). overexpression was an independent prognosticator in multivariate analysis for OS ( = 0.013, hazard ratio = 1.996) and DFS ( = 0.009, hazard ratio = 1.972). The 5-year OS rates were 39% and 61% in patients with low expression and high expression of , respectively. Inhibition of endogenous in ESCC cells increased cell viability and BrdU incorporation, and decreased the expression of epithelial marker E-cadherin. Immunohistochemically, expression was also positively correlated with E-cadherin expression. High expression is independently associated with a better prognosis in patients with ESCC and downregulation of increases ESCC cell growth and decreases E-cadherin expression. Our results suggest that may be a novel therapeutic target for patients with ESCC.