RACK1 is an organ-specific prognostic predictor in OSCC

Abstract Objectives This study aims to verify that RACK1 is an organ-specific prognostic predictor in patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). Experimental design The RACK1 expression level was assessed by immunohistochemistry (IHC) in a total of 342 OSCC patients from 3 independent cohorts. The multivariate hazard ratios for Overall Survival (OS) was determined by Cox proportional hazards regression model. OS was analyzed in 460 Head Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC) patients from TCGA data set. The expression level of RACK1 was analyzed in 60 cases multiple organ tissue microarrays representing both normal and cancer tissues by IHC, and in TCGA database of mRNA abundance in cancers and paired normal tissues. Results The median follow-up times of patients in the study was 74, 52, and 78 months. High expression of RACK1 was identified in tumors from 103 of 151 patients (68.2%), 51 of 83 patients (61.4%), and 59 of 108 patients (54.6%). Compared with low expression, high expression of RACK1 was strongly associated with worse OS, with HR of 0.5995 (95% CI, 0.3929 to 0.9147; P = 0.0176), 0.4402 (95% CI, 0.2321 to 0.8348; P = 0.0120), and 0.5010 (95% CI, 0.2886 to 0.8699; P = 0.0141). This finding is consistent with TCGA HNSCC data (P = 0.0276). Tissue microarrays analyses showed different protein expression level of RACK1 in multiple human carcinomas and this finding is consistent with the TCGA database analysis of RACK1 mRNA abundance. Conclusion Our findings demonstrated that RACK1 is a good independent organ-specific predictor of the risk of death in OSCC.