Abstract. Previous studies of the roles of special AT-rich sequence binding protein-1 (SATB1) in the development and progression of cancer have suggested that SATB1 promotes cancer cell metastasis. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the role of SATB1 in the progression and prognosis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). ESCC tissues were collected from 102 patients and SATB1 mRNA expression was measured by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. The association between expression of SATB1 mRNA with clinicopathological features and prognosis was assessed, and the prognosis of ESCC was evaluated using Kaplan-Meier survival curves. In the 102 ESCC tissues, SATB1 mRNA expression correlated with the clinical tumor node metastasis stage (P<0.05), but not with any other clinicopathological features (including age, gender, tumor differentiation grade, adjuvant radio/chemotherapy, or the consumption of alcohol and use of cigarettes) (P>0.05). The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of patients with high SATB1 expression was decreased compared with those with low SATB1 expression. The present study indicated that SATB1 mRNA expression was associated with the postoperative recurrent and poor prognosis in ESCC. SATB1 may be a novel marker for predicting the recurrent and worse prognosis of ESCC.
IntroductionEsophageal cancer cases are distributed worldwide; its mortality rate ranks sixth among all types of cancer and it is the fourth most commonly occurring cancer in China (1,2). China is among the highest risk areas of esophageal cancer, where ~90% of cases are squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) (3). The 5-year survival rate and quality of life remain low (3). However, the molecular mechanisms underlying the initiation and progression of esophageal SCC (ESCC) remain unclear.Special AT-rich sequence binding protein-1 (SATB1), a tissue-specific nuclear matrix binding protein, was identified in 1992 (4). SATB1 is primarily expressed in thymocytes, and also the expression of SATB1 in the basal layer of the epidermis is regulated by p63 (5,6). SATB1 can regulate gene expression by folding chromatin into loop domains and tethering DNA domains to the SATB1 network structure (7,8). Under normal conditions, SATB1 is expressed at low levels in cells and tissues, but is overexpressed in a variety of malignant tumors, including laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, endometrial cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, rectal cancer, cutaneous malignant melanoma, gastric cancer, prostate cancer, lung cancer and cutaneous T-cell lymphoma (7,(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). The expression of SATB1 has been examined in esophageal adenocarcinoma and is an independent prognostic factor (20). In several types of cancer, including laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, endometrial cancer, hepatocellular cancer and lung cancer, high expression of SATB1 promotes tumor growth and metastasis, and is a negative prognostic factor (7,(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20). SATB1 can regul...