Survivin as a Prognostic Factor for Osteosarcoma Patients

Purpose: Survivin is one of the apoptosis inhibitor genes and is rarely expressed in adult ­tissues. However, survivin expression has been detected in various human cancers and ­correlations have been recognized between the level of expression of this gene in tumors and prognosis. In this study, we investigated the correlations between survivin mRNA expres­sion in osteosarcoma tissues and clinicopathological parameters. Methods: There were 22 osteosarcoma patients in our hospital with paraffin-embedded ­tissues which could be extracted from biopsy specimens. We used the RT-PCR method after extracting total RNA and conducted a densitometric analysis to determine the ratio of survivin relative to h-GAPDH as an internal marker. Results: Expression of survivin mRNA was detected in all osteosarcoma samples. Patients with metastasis had high survivin mRNA levels in initial biopsy specimens (p<0.01). Moreover, there was a statistically significant difference in survivin mRNA expression between ­patients with and without metastasis (p<0.01). Conclusion: We concluded that high levels of survivin mRNA expression suggest poor prognosis for osteosarcoma patients.