Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) are the sixth most common cancer worldwide. Growing evidence showed that Melanoma-associated antigen-A11 (MAGE-A11) was abnormally expressed in various malignancies, but MAGE-A11 expression and its biological roles in HNSCC had not been reported in detail. The aim of the study was to investigate the association between MAGE-A11 signatures and clinicopathological features of HNSCC patients and uncover its potential mechanisms in HNSCC patients.
Methods: In the present study, we analyzed the expression of MAGE-A11  gene and evaluated the impact of MAGE-A11  genes expression on clinical outcome from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. MAGE-A11 expression was assessed in a well-characterized series of HNSCC (N = 75) with long-term follow-up and 10 cases of adjacent non-cancerous tissues, which were diagnosed between 2013 and 2014, by using immunohistochemistry. The correlation between MAGE-A11 expression and clinicopathological factors was analyzed. Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression analyses were used to assess the prognostic significance of MAGE-A11 expression among HNSCC patients.
Results: The results showed that MAGE-A11  mRNA expression was increased in HNSCC tissues compared to “normal” tissues (P  < 10^{− 12}). MAGE-A11 protein expression was not correlated with lymph node status, relapse, age, gender, histological grade, differentiation, clinical stage, tumor size, radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The patients with high MAGE-A11 expression had lower 5-year overall survival (OS) rates than those with low MAGE-A11 expression as determined using the Kaplan–Meier method. The univariate and multivariate analyses confirmed that elevated MAGE-A11 was an independent prognostic factor for the OS of HNSCC patients.
Conclusion: These findings indicate that MAGE-A11 may be a valuable diagnostic or prognostic marker as well as a potential molecular therapy target for HNSCC patients.
Keywords: Melanoma-associated antigen-A11, immunohistochemistry, head and neck squamous cell carcinoma, prognosis