The association of UNC5A expression with the clinicopathologic features and prognosis of radiotherapy in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer.

Unlabelled: UNC5A is widely known as a neuronal axonal guide factor and was found to have a low expression in a variety of tumors. In our study, we investigated the expression of UNC5A in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and analyzed its association with the clinical features and prognosis of NSCLC radiotheray patients.

Methods: We collected 169 NSCLC patients' clinical and pathological data for the study. Immunohistochemical staining was evaluated to analyze the expression of UNC5A in NSCLC tissues. The expressions of UNC5A in normal and NSCLC tissues were analyzed using the Oncomine database. We investigated the overall prognostic value of UNC5A in NSCLC patients through the Kaplan-Meier plotter database.

Results: The low expression rate of UNC5A was 55.0% (93/169) in NSCLC by immunohistochemical analysis. The overall survival (OS) of NSCLC radiotheray patients with a low expression of UNC5A was shorter than that in patients with a high expression (P = 0.000). The expression of UNC5A was strongly and significantly associated with the TNM stage (P = 0.013) but not associcated with other clinicopathologic features. The results of COX regression showed that the expression of UNC5A, general condition and TNM stage were independent prognositic factors of NSCLC patients. ROC analysis showed a high area under the curve for UNC5A expression in NSCLC (AUC = 0.746). At a cut-off level of > 1027, the UNC5A expression, general condition and TNM stages, could be used for the prognosis of NSCLC with high sensitivity and specificity. The Oncomine database showed that UNC5A expression was found to significantly decline in NSCLC tissues compared to normal tissues (P = 0.029). We used the Kaplan-Meier plotter database to analyze NSCLC patients with a high expression of UNC5A and found they had better OS than patients with a low expression (P = 0.0492).

Conclusion: The expression of UNC5A may be a potential prognostic biomarker of NSCLC.