Clinicopathological and prognostic role of ROC1 in neoplasms: A PRISMA-compliant systematic review and meta-analysis

Regulator of cullins 1 (ROC1) is frequently overexpressed in multiple tumors, and many pieces of research demonstrate that ROC1 is associated with the prognosis and development of a diversity of neoplasms and it is able to serve as a promising prognostic biomarker. Here we performed this meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic and clinicopathological significance of ROC1 in patients suffering from cancer. METHODS: We searched Pubmed, Embase, Web of Science, Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), and WanFang database. The role of ROC1 in cancers was evaluated by pooled hazard ratios (HRs), odd ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence intervals (CIs). RESULTS: In total, 9 studies including 1002 patients were enrolled in this analysis. The pooled results showed that patients with high expression of ROC1 had poor overall survival (OS) (HR: 2.04, 95% CI: 1.48–2.60, P < 0.001) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) (HR: 1.727, 95% CI: 0.965–2.488, P < 0.001). Additionally, elevated expression of ROC1 was significantly correlated with advanced clinical Tumor Node Metastasis stage (OR: 2.708, 95% CI: 1.856–3.951, P < 0.001), positive lymph node metastasis (OR: 1.968; 95% CI: 1.294–2.993, P = .002), large tumor size (OR: 1.522, 95% CI: 1.079–2.149, P = .017) and poor tumor differentiation (OR: 2.448, 95% CI: 1.793–3.344, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Elevated ROC1 expression predicted worse prognosis and advanced pathological parameters in various cancers. ROC1 was a significant prognostic biomarker for poor survival in human cancers.