Original articleClinicopathologic features and prognostic implications of MYBL2 protein expression in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

MYBL2 (B-MYB), a member of the MYB family of transcription factor genes, regulates the expression of genes in the process of tumorigenesis. Many studies have shown that MYBL2 is high expresssion in several human malignancies including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, its role in PDAC is still unclear. The present study is designed to investigate MYBL2 expression levels and prognostic significance in PDAC patients. We assessed MYBL2 expression level by immunohistochemistry in tumor tissues from 93 PDAC patients undergoing curative resection. The association of MYBL2 expression with clinicopathological parameters was evaluated by Pearson's chi-square (χ2) test, Fisher's exact test, and Spearman's rank. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox proportional hazards models were used to estimate the effect of MYBL2 expression on survival. The expression of MYBL2 was significantly higher in PDAC cells compared with adjacent non-cancerous tissues (P = 0.000). The overexpression of MYBL2 in the tumor tissues was significantly correlated with a higher T classification (p = 0.002), peri-neural invasion (PNI) (p = 0.013) and vital status (p = 0.045). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that high MYBL2 expression was significantly associated with shorter overall survival times in PDAC patients. Moreover, univariate and multivariate analysis confirmed MYBL2 expression (P = 0.010), histological grade (P = 0.001) as independent prognostic factors in PDAC. These results suggested that overexpression of MYBL2 might serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in PDAC patients.