Prohibitin in squamous cell carcinoma of the lung: its expression and possible clinical significance

Summaryrohibitin is localized to mitochondria where it might have a role in the maintenance of mitochondrial function and protection against senescence. In this study, we show that prohibitin is up-regulated in lung squamous cell carcinoma tissues compared with adjacent normal tissues using agarose 2-dimensional differential gel electrophoresis and immunoblotting. Prohibitin expression was further evaluated by immunohistochemistry. We statistically analyzed the association of prohibitin expression with clinicopathologic indicators in 78 patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma. Our data suggested that prohibitin expression was positively correlated with the International Union Against Cancer (UICC) classification of tumor grade (P < .001), pathologic stage (P < .001), tumor size (P = .01), and lymph node metastasis (P = .004). Furthermore, we found that prohibitin expression was an independent prognostic indicator (P = .037) for overall survival of patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma by multivariate analysis using the Cox regression method. These findings may encourage further studies investigating prohibitin function in lung squamous cell carcinoma.