The aim of the present study was to investigate the correlation between the expression levels of excision repair cross complementing 1 (ERCC1), thymidylate synthase (TYMS), class III β-tubulin (TUBB3), ribonucleoside-diphosphate reductase (RRM1) and topoisomerase IIα (TOP2A) with the clinical characteristics of patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). A total of 29 ESCC tissue samples were collected from patients that had not previously received systematic treatment. The expression levels of ERCC1, TYMS, TUBB3, RRM1 and TOP2A were determined using a microarray technique, while Spearman's rank correlation analysis was used to determine the strength of the correlations between the expression levels of the biomarkers and the pathogenesis of esophageal cancer. High expression levels of TYMS and TOP2A were observed in 24% of the samples and high expression levels of TUBB3 and RRM1 were identified in 7% of the samples. Hierarchical clustering analysis of these biomarkers enabled the samples to be grouped. Group 1 patients exhibited low expression levels of TYMS, RRM1 and TOP2A and high expression of ERCC1 and TUBB3, while group 2 samples had low expression levels of ERCC1 and TUBB3 and high expression levels of TYMS, RRM1 and TOP2A. Analysis using Fisher's exact test demonstrated a statistically significant difference in the severity of carcinoma invasion between the two groups (P<0.05), however, no significant differences were identified with regard to the clinical stage or lymphatic metastasis (P>0.05). Therefore, hierarchical clustering analysis indicated that the expression levels of ERCC1, TYMS, TUBB3, RRM1 and TOP2A were closely associated with the clinical characteristics of patients with ESCC.
Keywords: esophageal squamous cell carcinoma; gene expression; hierarchy cluster analysis.