Cytoplasmic expression of survivin is an independent predictor of poor prognosis in patients with salivary gland cancer.

AIMS: The expression of the inhibitor of apoptosis protein survivin has been shown to be a significant prognostic indicator in various human cancers. The aim was to assess its expression and prognostic value in salivary gland adenocarcinoma and muco-epidermoid carcinoma.

METHODS AND

RESULTS

Survivin expression was analysed in 48 patients with parotid gland cancer (21 muco-epidermoid, 27 adenocarcinomas) by means of immunohistochemistry. The experimental findings were correlated with clinicopathological and survival parameters. A high cytoplasmic expression of survivin was found in 30% of the examined tumours without any significant correlation with the patients' clinicopathological characteristics (P > 0.05). Within all patients, the estimated overall survival rate of muco-epidermoid carcinomas was significantly better than that of adenocarcinomas (P = 0.013). A high cytoplasmic survivin expression significantly indicated a poor 5-year disease-free survival rate compared to patients with a low cytoplasmic survivin expression in the whole group (P = 0.001) and in adenocarcinomas (P = 0.004). In a multivariate analysis, a high cytoplasmic survivin expression was the only independent prognostic indicator for a significantly poorer 5-year disease-free survival rate (P = 0.001).

CONCLUSIONS

The correlation between cytoplasmic survivin expression and survival in salivary gland malignancies might make this an effective tool in patient follow-up, prognosis and targeted therapy in future.