Purpose: MAS-related G protein-coupled receptor, member D (MRGD) has been reported to be involved in tumorigenesis in vivo. However, the clinical role of MRGD in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains unclarified. The purpose of the current study was to detect the expression of MRGD mRNA in NSCLC formalin-fixed (FF), paraffin-embedded (PE) tissues and to investigate the clinicopathological significance of the MRGD level in NSCLC patients.
Methods: The expression of MRGD mRNA was examined in 125 NSCLC tissue samples together with paired para-noncancerous FF/PE tissues by using real time quantitative PCR (qRT-PCR). Furthermore, the relationship between MRGD level and clinicopathological parameters of NSCLC was analyzed.
Results: The average level of MRGD in NSCLC tumor tissues (1.0682±0.6096) was remarkably higher than that in the adjacent non-cancerous lung tissue (0.3994±0.2838, p<0.001). The area under curve (AUC) of receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) of MRGD mRNA was 0.853 (95% CI: 0.808-0.898, p(0.001). Moreover, the level of MRGD mRNA was found to be correlated to lymph node metastasis (r=0.219, p=0.014), tumor size (r=0.221, p=0.013) and clinical TNM stage (r=0.187, p=0.037). Finally, the survival of patients in high MGRD expression group was 7.94±9.85 months, remarkably shorter than that of the low expression group (20.84±1.19 months, p=0.049).
Conclusions: MRGD may be a vital diagnostic and prognostic factor in NSCLC. MRGD possesses the potential to become a new target for the molecular therapy of NSCLC.