High expression of ovarian cancer immunoreactive antigen domain containing 2 (OCIAD2) is associated with poor prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

The clinicopathological implications of ovarian cancer immunoreactive antigen domain containing 2 (OCIAD2) in lung adenocarcinoma were investigated. The expression of OCIAD2 in 191 surgically resected lung adenocarcinomas was examined using immunohistochemistry. OCIAD2 expression was quantified using the H-score and dichotomized as high or low. High OCIAD2 protein expression was significantly correlated with vascular invasion (P = 0.0018), lymphatic permeation (P = 0.049), T factor (P = 0.0024), and pathological stage (P = 0.0003). High OCIAD2 expression was significantly associated with poorer overall survival (OS) (n = 191, P = 0.0325). In peripheral-type lung adenocarcinomas (n = 161), high OCIAD2 expression was significantly associated with both poorer OS (P = 0.0214) and poorer disease-free survival (P = 0.0496). Adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) and minimally invasive adenocarcinoma (MIA) showed weaker OCIAD2 expression than invasive adenocarcinoma. Among small adenocarcinomas measuring 2 cm or less in greatest dimension classified according to the Noguchi's classification (n = 79), invasive adenocarcinomas showed significantly higher OCIAD2 expression than non-invasive adenocarcinomas (P = 0.0007). Interestingly, OCIAD2 was expressed heterogeneously even within a tumor, and its expression was higher in areas of invasion than in areas of in situ spread. Our results suggest that OCIAD2 could be a useful prognostic biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma.