Expression Of Survivin And Its Correlation With P53 And Apoptosis In Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer

Objective: A novel inhibitor of apoptosis protein designated survivin has recently been found in many tumor tissues but not in normal tissues. Survivin is closely associated with occurrence and development of malignant tumor. However, studies on the expression of survivin in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were rarely reported. The correlation between survivin and p53 is not elucidated. This study was conducted to investigate the expression of survivin in NSCLC and its relation with p53 and apoptosis.Methods: Survivin and p53 expression was examed in sixty paraffin-embeded NSCLC samples and 16 benign pulmonary disease tissues by immunohistochemistry methods. Apoptosis of sixty NSCLC samples was detected by TUNEL technique.Results: Survivin was expressed in 38 of 60(63.3%) cases of NSCLC tissues. In contrast, benign pulmonary disease tissues did not express survivin. The expression of survivin gene was closely related to TNM stages, lymph node involvement, and cell differentiation, but not to histological classification, gender, and ages. The expression of survivin gene was closely related to the expression of p53 in NSCLC tissues. The positive rate of survivin expression was significantly higher in p53-positive than in p53-negative cases (80.5% versus 26.3%). There was a significant difference between the two groups (P<0.01). A correlation coefficient test show an negtive correlation between the apoptosis index of tumor cells and the level of survivin expression in NSCLC. (r=-0.231,P<0.05) .Conclusion: Apoptosis inhibitition caused by abnormal survivin expression may participate in the onset and progression of NSCLC. The over-expression survivin suggested the bad prognosis in NSCLC. The over-expression survivin and de-activiation of antioncogene p53 might play synergetic roles in the carcinogenesis of NSCLC.