Background/aims: To explore the expression of cancerous inhibitor of protein phosphatase 2A (CIP2A) in human cholangiocarcinoma tissues and adjacent non-cancerous normal bile duct tissues, and to investigate the clinicopathological signinficance of the CIP2A protein in cholangiocarcinoma patients.
Methodology: Immunohistochemical staining was used to detect the expression of CIP2A protein in 57 cases (35 men and 22 women) of cholangiocarcinoma samples and 23 cases of para-cancerous normal bile duct samples. The results were analyzed with clinicopathological patameters and overall median survival time.
Results: The positive rate of CIP2A protein expression in cholangiocarcinoma tissues was significantly higher than para-cancerous normal bile duct tissues. The expression of CIP2A was found to be not correlated with age, gender, smoking, grading, staging, lymph node metastasis, tumor site and hepatitis B virus (HBV) (p>0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the overall survival time in patients with positive expression of CIP2A protein were shorter than in patients with negative expression of CIP2A (long rank=5.180, p=0.023). COX regression analysis implied that expression of CIP2A protein was an independent prognostic factor for cholangiocarcinoma patients (p<0.05).
Conclusions: CIP2A is overexpressed in human cholangiocarcinoma tissues, and overexpression of CIP2A correlates with poor prognosis. CIP2A expression may be a potential marker for biological malignancy.