Prognostic value of transcriptional expression of fibronectin type III domain-containing 4 (FNDC4) in head and neck carcinoma patients treated with chemoradiotherapy

PURPOSE: FNDC4 gene encodes the fibronectin type III domain-containing 4 protein. Elevated expression of FNDC4 has been associated with poor prognosis in several types of cancer. There are no studies that have evaluated the prognostic capacity of FNDC4 in patients with head and neck cancer (HNSCC). The aim of our study was to analyze the relationship between the transcriptional expression of FNDC4 and prognosis in HNSCC patients. METHODS: We determined the transcriptional expression of FNDC4 in 67 patients with advanced-stage HNSCC (III–IV) treated with chemoradiotherapy. The FNDC4 expression was categorized according to the disease-specific survival with a recursive partitioning analysis. RESULTS: There were significant differences in disease-specific survival as a function of the level of FNDC4 transcriptional expression. The 5-year disease-specific survival for patients with high FNDC4 expression (n = 44, 65.7%) was 32.9% (95% CI: 16.5–49.3%), and for patients with low expression (n = 23, 34.3%) it was 85.4% (95% CI: 70.2–100%) (P = 0.0001). Patients with a high FNDC4 expression had poorer local (P = 0.097), regional (P = 0.008), and distant (0.034) recurrence-free survival. The results of a multivariate analysis showed that patients with a high FNDC4 expression had a 6.15-fold increased risk of death as a consequence of the HNSCC (95% CI: 1.71–22.06). CONCLUSION: FNCF4 transcriptional expression was significantly related to the disease-specific survival of HNSCC patients treated with chemoradiotherapy. Patients with elevated FNDC4 expression had a significant decrease in disease-specific survival. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12094-022-02870-3.