Background: Increasing evidence has suggested that RhoE plays an important role in carcinogenesis and progression. However, the correlation between RhoE expression and clinical outcome in lung cancer has not been investigated.
Methods: RhoE expression was detected by immunohistochemistry on tissue microarray containing samples from 115 patients with non-small cell lung cancer with a median follow-up of 54 months.
Results: RhoE was overexpressed in the cytoplasm of lung cancer cells compared with undetectable expression of RhoE in the adjacent nontumoral cells. Patients with RhoE-negative tumors had substantially longer cancer-related survival than did patients with RhoE-positive tumors. Multivariate analysis showed that RhoE overexpression was an independent marker for cancer-related survival in the entire population after adjusting for other prognostic factors.
Conclusions: RhoE expression may serve as an unfavorable prognostic factor in patients with non-small cell lung cancer.