OTUD7B and NIK expression in non-small cell lung cancer: Association with clinicopathological features and prognostic implications

Abstract Purpose To investigate the correlation among OTUD7B and NIK expression and the clinicopathological characteristics in NSCLC patients. Methods One hundred and twenty patients were involved in this study. We detected OTUD7B and NIK expression by immunohistochemistry and analyzed their correlation with clinicopathological data. Results The expression of OTUD7B and NIK were negatively correlated in NSCLC tumor samples (r s  = −0.421, P P  = 0.018), less lymph node metastasis ( P  = 0.012) and earlier TNM stage( P  = 0.039), while the higher expression of NIK was only related to more lymph node metastasis( P  = 0.031) and later TNM stage( P  = 0.011). MMP-9 was negatively correlated with OTUD7B and positively correlated with NIK. In addition, the high expression of OTUD7B was associated with good prognosis of NSCLC patients (log-rank = 6.714, P  = 0.0096), and a high OTUD7B/low NIK index can predict an even better prognosis (log-rank = 11.794, P  = 0.0006). Moreover, the multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that OTUD7B rather than NIK is an independent marker of overall survival in NSCLC patients(HR = 1.602, 95% CI 1.009-2.544, P  = 0.046). Conclusions OTUD7B and NIK may play important roles in the development of lung cancer. The combination of OTUD7B and NIK expression may be a good index for predicting the prognosis of NSCLC.