Background: The Aurora-A(Aur-A) gene, a key regulator of mitosis, has been proved as an oncogene in a variety of cancers. The Aur-A overexpression has been proved correlated with aggressiveness of cancer cells. However, the frequency of Aur-A protein overexpression, as well as its association with clinicopathologic parameters and prognosis remain unclear in lung adenocarcinoma(ADC). This study tried to clarify the clinical significance of Aur-A in patients with resected lung ADC. Patients and methods: A total of 142 informative patients with surgically resected lung ADC and 20 normal lung tissues were enrolled. Western blot and immunohistochemistry(IHC) were utilized to assess protein expression of Aur-A.Result: The expression of Aur-A was elevated in most of tumor tissues compared with the adjacent tissues by western blot. The IHC results showed that Aur-A protein was over-expressed in 98 of 142(69.0%) tumor sections, while Aur-A was low-expressed in all normal lung sections. A positive correlation between Aur-A overexpression rate and ascending pathologic stages was observed(P<0.05). Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that patients with Aur-A high expression had significantly inferior survival compared to those with Aur-A low expression. Both overall survival(OS) and disease-free survival(DFS) of positive overexpression patients were shorter than the negative group(P=0.036, P=0.041, respectively). Multivariate analysis confirmed that Aur-A expression, as an independent and significant factor for both DFS and OS, could predict a poor prognosis in patients with resected lung ADC(P=0.022, P=0.049, respectively).Conclusions: Aur-A was overexpressed in lung ADC and overexpression of Aur-A might be a novel predictor for poor prognosis and potential therapeutic target in lung ADC.
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