Sp1 and COX2 expression is positively correlated with a poor prognosis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

// Junjie Hang 1, 2, * , Hai Hu 1, 2, * , Junjie Huang 3, * , Ting Han 1, 2 , Meng Zhuo 1, 2 , Yangyang Zhou 4 , Lei Wang 5 , Yi Wang 1, 2 , Feng Jiao 1, 2 , Liwei Wang 1, 2 1 Department of Medical Oncology and Pancreatic Cancer Center, Shanghai General Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai 201620, China 2 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Pancreatic Disease, Shanghai 201620, China 3 Department of Hematology, First Affiliated Hospital of Shenzhen University, Shenzhen 513000, China 4 Department of Medical Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical College, Anhui 233004, China 5 Department of Radiation Oncology, Lianyungang First People’s Hospital, Jiangsu 222002, China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Feng Jiao, email: jiao_f@yeah.net Liwei Wang, email: yzwlw@hotmail.com Keywords: pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, specificity protein 1, cyclooxygenase-2, correlation, prognosis Received: January 17, 2016     Accepted: March 28, 2016     Published: April 5, 2016 ABSTRACT Previous studies showed that celecoxib, a cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2) inhibitor, can inhibit angiogenesis and metastasis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) via the suppression of specificity protein 1 (Sp1). In this study, we investigated the prognostic value of Sp1 and COX2 in 88 PDAC patients. Our study showed there was a positive correlation between Sp1 and COX2 expression ( P =0.001) by using the Spearman’s rank test. Pearson Chi-square test revealed that Sp1 and COX2 expression were positively associated with lymph node metastasis ( P <0.05, both). In addition, the Kaplan–Meier analysis showed that patients with Sp1- or COX2-positive expression exhibited poorer overall survival (OS) than those with Sp1- or COX2-negative expression ( P <0.05, all). Most importantly, Sp1- and COX2-negative patients had the best OS ( P =0.01). In multivariate analysis, Sp1 expression ( P =0.03), COX2 expression ( P =0.04), and nuclear grade ( P =0.009) were found to be independent predictors for OS. Moreover, we confirmed that Sp1 could upregulate the expression of COX2 in PDAC cell lines by western blot analysis, and both are of important prognostic value in PDAC.