Overexpression of pyruvate kinase M2 predicts a poor prognosis for patients with osteosarcoma

It is stated that high expression of pyruvate kinase (PKM2) emerges as a significant player in the metabolism and progression of various human malignancies. However, the expression of PKM2 and its association with the prognosis of osteosarcoma had not yet been studied. In the present study, the expression and biological significance of PKM2 in osteosarcoma were investigated. We found that PKM2 expression was elevated in the cancerous tissues and it was more abundant than the adjacent normal tissues (60.2 vs 26.1 %, p < 0.001). Moreover, we showed that high PKM2 expression was positively correlated with Enneking stage (p = 0.006) and distant metastasis (p = 0.007) but not with the age, gender, tumor site, tumor size, histologic grade, alkaline phosphatase (ALP), lactate dehydrogenase (LDH), and local pain of the patients. Furthermore, Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that the overall survival (OS) for patients with high PKM2 expression was significantly lower than those with low PKM2 expression (p < 0.001). Finally, multivariate analysis revealed that high PKM2 expression was an independent prognostic factor for osteosarcoma patients (p = 0.004). Collectively, these data indicated that elevated PKM2 might serve as a novel target for the treatment of osteosarcoma.