High tumoral maspin expression is associated with improved survival of patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma

Maspin, a member of the serpin family of protease inhibitors, is known to h ave tumor-suppressor functions, However, the association between its expres sion level and survival has not been demonstrated in human cancer. Using th e immunohistochemical technique to examine the expression levels of maspin in 44 cases of oral squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), we found that 66% of the cases expressed low to intermediate levels of maspin and 34% of the cases expressed high levels of maspin, We further examined maspin protein express ion in a series of sis SCC cell lines from the head and neck, and found tha t all but one expressed low or no maspin protein. We also compared the clin icopathological features of the oral SCC cases with the maspin expression l evel, and found that high maspin expression was associated with the absence of lymph node metastasis, More importantly,,ve showed that higher maspin e xpression was significantly associated with better rates of overall surviva l, suggesting that high maspin expression may be a favorable prognostic mar ker for oral SCC.