Expression and clinical significance of HSPA2 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: It has been shown that heat shock-related 70-kDa protein 2 (HSPA2), a member of the HSP70 family of heat shock proteins, is important for cancer cell growth and metastasis. However, the status of HSPA2 expression and its prognostic significance in pancreatic cancer remain unknown. METHODS: Quantitative reverse transcriptase ploymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was applied to examine HSPA2 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in 104 pairs of pancreatic cancer tissues and adjacent noncancerous tissues. Statistical analyses were applied to evaluate the diagnostic value and associations of HSPA2 expression with clinicopathological characteristics. RESULTS: HSPA2 mRNA was significantly overexpressed in pancreatic cancer tissues (3.9 ± 0.8) than in adjacent normal tissues (1.1 ± 0.4) (P < 0.001). Clinicopathological analysis showed that HSPA2 expression was significantly correlated with tumor size (P = 0.024), histological differentiation (P = 0.012), TNM stage (P = 0.006), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.043) and serum CA19-9 level (P = 0.046). Moreover, patients with higher HSPA2 expression levels had shorter overall survival time than those with lower HSPA2 expression levels (P = 0.019). Furthermore, Cox regression analyses showed that HSPA2 expression was an independent predictor of overall survival (P = 0.011). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that overexpression of HSPA2 in pancreatic cancer is associated with aggressive progression and poor prognosis and that HSPA2 may be served as a prognostic marker. VIRTUAL SLIDES: The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/5988744821527257.