Overexpression of MAC30 is associated with poor clinical outcome in human non-small-cell lung cancer

The aim of this study was to detect MAC30 expression in human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and to analyze its association with prognosis of NSCLC patients. Quantitative real-time RT-PCR was performed to examine the expression of MAC30 mRNA in 20 cases of NSCLC and corresponding non-tumor tissue samples. Immunohistochemistry was performed to detect the expression of MAC30 in 95 NSCLC tissues. We found that the expression levels of MAC30 mRNA in NSCLC tissues were significantly higher than those in corresponding non-tumor tissues. High-level MAC30 expression was correlated with poor tumor differentiation, TNM stage, and lymph node metastasis. Patients with high expression levels of MAC30 showed lower overall survival rate than those with low expression levels. Multivariate analysis showed that high MAC30 protein expression was an independent prognostic factor for NSCLC patients. Our study suggests that over-expression of MAC30 may play an important role in the progression of NSCLC and MAC30 expression may offer a valuable marker for predicting the outcome of patients with NSCLC.