Overexpression of Autophagy-Related 16-Like 1 in Patients with Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Dyregulation of autophagy has been reported in various human cancers including oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). The objective of this study was to link expression of autophagy-related 16-like 1 (ATG16L1), a protein essential for autophagosome formation, to clinical outcome in a cohort of 90 OSCC patients. Expression level of ATG16L1 was assessed by immunohistochemistry and an immunoreactivity score (IRS), ranging from 0 to 9, was assigned to each case. The results were correlated with clinicopathological parameters and outcome of patients. Twenty-seven patients (30 %) exhibited ATG16L1 overexpression as indicated by an IRS of 9. Overexpression of ATG16L1 was significantly associated with disease stage (p = 0.001), size (p = 0.031) of the tumor, lymph node metastasis (p = 0.004), and histological grade (p = 0.038). ATG16L1 overexpression significantly affected the overall survival (p = 0.020) and time to recurrence (p = 0.031) of OSCC patients in Kaplan-Meier analysis. The present study suggested that ATG16L1 may be used as a biomarker for selecting OSCC patients with a more aggressive phenotype.