Expression and clinical significance of BIRC6 in human epithelial ovarian cancer

Baculoviral IAP repeat containing 6 (BIRC6), an unusually large member of the IAP family, may play an important role in oncogenesis. The aim of this study was to assess the value of BIRC6 in predicting tumor recurrence after curative resection in epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) patients. In this study, the differences of BIRC6 expression in four paired EOC and normal tissue were performed by Western blot, and expression of BIRC6 protein was analyzed in 100 clinicopathologically characterized EOC cases from those who underwent curative resection between 2003 and 2011 by immunohistochemistry. Kaplan-Meier survival estimates and log-rank tests were used to assess the prognostic significance. It was found that BIRC6 expression was higher in the carcinoma tissue than in normal control tissue at protein level by Western blot. There was a significant difference of BIRC6 expression in patients categorized according to tumor differentiation (p = 0.016). Univariate analyses and multivariate analyses revealed that BIRC6 was an independent significant predictor for overall survival and disease-free survival. A prognostic significance of BIRC6 was also found by Kaplan-Meier method. The expression of BIRC6 in the cytoplasm is associated with EOC differentiation and may be a novel predictor for poor prognosis of EOC patients after curative resection.