The absence of and/or a low expression of PTEN and activated mTOR may play an important role in the development of NSCLC, and may represent new prognostic biomarkers for a poor prognosis in patients with NSCLC.

Cyclin Y (CCNY) is a novel cyclin and almost nothing is known about its role in human cancers. To investigate the clinical significance of serum anti-CCNY autoantibodies in nonsmall-cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC), the serum levels of CCNY protein in 264 patients with NSCLC, 103 patients with tuberculosis, and 89 healthy controls were analyzed by immunohistochemistry. The result shows that, compared with normal lung tissues, the NSCLC tissues contained higher levels of CCNY protein. The levels of anti-CCNY autoantibodies were higher in the sera of the patients with NSCLC than in the sera of the healthy controls (P < 0.001) or the patients with tuberculosis (P = 0.027). Moreover, in a Cox regression analysis, anti-CCNY autoantibody was an independent factor that predicted poor prognosis for postoperative patients with early-stage NSCLC (P = 0.026) as well as for those with distant metastasis (P = 0.012). Our data indicated that Anti-CCNY autoantibody may be useful as a latent tumor marker to facilitate diagnosis and may represent a novel prognostic indicator for patients with early stage NSCLC.

ABSTRACT. This study aimed to investigate the effects of singlenucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) XRCC1 Arg194Trp, XRCC1 Arg280His, XRCC1 Arg399Gln, XRCC3 Thr241Met, XPG His104Asp, and XPG His46His in genes involved in the DNA-repair pathway on the outcomes of platinum-based chemotherapy in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The study period was from January 2005 to January 2006, and 378 NSCLC patients were enrolled within 1 month after being diagnosed with NSCLC. Genomic DNA was extracted using the Qiagen Blood Kit. Polymerase chain reaction combined with a restriction fragment length polymorphism assay was used for genotyping. Individuals with the XRCC1 399A/A genotype had a higher probability of responding well to platinum-based chemotherapy, indicated by an odds ratio (OR) of 2.27 [95% confidence interval (CI) = 1.64-6.97]. Similarly, the XPG T/T genotype was significantly associated with improved responses to chemotherapy, indicated by an OR of 1.90 (95%CI = 1.10-3.28). The XRCC1 399A/A genotype was significantly associated with longer disease-free survival and overall survival, indicated by hazard ratios (HRs) of 0.48 (95%CI = 0.25-0.88) and 0.51 (95%CI = 0.26-0.98), respectively. Moreover, the XPG 46T/T genotype increased the likelihood of longer disease-free survival and overall survival of NSCLC patients treated with platinum-based chemotherapy (HR = 0.47; 95%CI = 0.22-0.82 and HR = 0.52; 95%CI = 0.31-0.96, respectively). These results indicate that XRCC1 Arg399Gln and XPG His46His might significantly affect the clinical outcomes of platinum-based chemotherapy, highlighting the need for larger studies to confirm the role of these two SNPs in outcomes of NSCLC treatments.