Correlation between Mnk2 protein expression and prognosis of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

AIM: To investigate the protein expression of mitogen-activated protein kinase-interacting kinase-2 (Mnk2) and its prognostic effect in the patients with resected esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). METHODS: A total of 86 informative patients with surgically resected ESCC and 54 normal esophageal tissues were enrolled. Western blot and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were utilized to assess the protein expression of Mnk2, and its correlation with prognosis was statistically analyzed by the methods of Kaplan-Meier curve and Cox proportional hazard mode. RESULTS: The protein expression of Mnk2 was elevated in most of tumor tissues compared with the adjacent tissues. Clinicopathologic analysis showed that Mnk2 expression was significantly correlated with the TNM stage (P<0.05). Both disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) of Mnk2 over-expression patients were shorter than those in Mnk2 negative expression group. Multivariate analysis confirmed that Mnk2 expression, as an independent and significant factor for both DFS and OS, predicted a poor prognosis of the patients with resected ESCC (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: The expression of Mnk2 was significantly related to the TNM stages, and might be a novel predictor for prognosis in ESCC.