Background

Kin17 is critical in regulating the proliferation and metastasis of tumors in various malignancies. However, the relationship between Kin17 expression, clinicopathologic features, and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) prognosis remains unclear.

Methods

The analysis of Kin17 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression involved the utilization of data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset through the platforms the University of ALabama at Birmingham CANcer data analysis portal (UALCAN) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). To determine the expression levels of Kin17 in tissues, immunohistochemistry was conducted. Using Pearson's chi-square test, the relationship between Kin17 expression and clinicopathological variables was evaluated. Cox proportional hazard models (both univariate and multivariate), receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, and Kaplan–Meier survival curves were used to analyze survival.

Results

In both the TCGA and GEO datasets, the mRNA level of Kin17 was greater in tumor tissues when compared to tumor-adjacent tissues (P < 0.001). Similarly, there was a significant expression of Kin17 (P < 0.0001) in ESCC tissues. Elevated Kin17 expression correlated significantly with increased Ki-67 levels (P < 0.001), advanced pathological tumor node metastasis stage (P = 0.01), and positive lymph node metastasis (P = 0.02). According to univariate and multivariate Cox models, high Kin17 expression was associated with poorer progression-free survival (PFS) (hazard ratio (HR): 1.990, 95% confidence interval (CI): (1.040–3.810)), and Kin17 was an independent prognostic variable for overall survival (OS) (HR: 2.321, 95% CI: (1.056–5.101)). ROC curve showed that the area under the curve for predicting PFS and OS using the combination of Kin17 and K-i67 was 0.7088 and 0.7031, respectively. High Kin17 expression was associated with unfavorable PFS (HR: 2.009, 95% CI: (1.059–3.811)) and OS (HR: 2.997, 95% CI: (1.488–6.040)).

Conclusions

Kin17 is abundantly expressed in ESCC tissues and is potentially useful for prognostic evaluation and as a target for therapeutic interventions in ESCC.