Expression of the antiapoptosis gene, AAC-11, as a prognosis marker in non-small cell lung cancer

Inhibition of programmed cell death (apoptosis) is associated with increase d tumor aggressiveness. We hypothesized that a novel apoptosis inhibitor ge ne, antiapoptosis clone 11 (AAC-11), may be expressed in tumors of patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and affect their clinical outcome. Expression of AAC-11 messenger RNA was evaluated by reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) in 94 non-small cell lung carcinomas and adjacent histologically normal lung samples. The data was analyzed in refe rence to clinicopathological and survival data. AAC-11 transcripts were det ected in 12 (12.7%) of the tumor samples, although five of paired nor-Mal l ung samples showed very weak expression. There was no relationship between AAC-11 gene expression and age, gender, N or T-status. AAC-11 was preferent ially expressed in squamous cell carcinoma (26.9% of squamous cell carcinom a vs. 7% of adenocarcinoma). The NSCLC patients with AAC-11 expression had significantly poor survival than the patients without AAC-11 expression (P= 0.0360). Although the AAC-1 gene was not expressed in a majority of NSCLC t umors, we suggest that AAC-11 may predict poor survival. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.