Expression of Notch1 and Notch3 in non-small cell lung cancer and its clinical significance

Objective To assess the expression of Notch1 and Notch3 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and determine its association with prognosis.Methods Immunohistochemistry was uesd to detect Notch1 and Notch3 expression in NSCLC tissues and adjacent non-cancerous normal lung tissues from 60 patients undergoing surgical treatment.The correlation between the expression levels of Notch1 and Notch3 with clinicopathological features and postoperative survival time was analyzed.Results The positive expression rate of Notch1 and Notch3 (73.3％ and 76.7％) in NSCLC tissues was significantly higher than that in normal lung tissues (30.0％ and 26.7％,P ＜ 0.05).Moreover,Notch1 overexpression was significantly correlated with TNM stage (P ＜ 0.05) and lymph node metastasis (P ＜ 0.05).Notch3 overexpression was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis (P ＜ 0.05).Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that the overall survival time of Notch1-positive and Notch3-positive patients was shorter.Multivariate analysis further demonstrated that Notch1 and Notch3 were independent prognostic factors for patients with NSCLC.Conclusion Notch1 and Notch3 may be related with the clinicopathologic features of NSCLC tissues and useful biomarkers to predict the prognosis of patients with NSCLC. Key words: Non-small cell lung cancer;  Notch1 ;  Notch3 ;  Prognosis