Nuclear β-catenin accumulation is associated with increased expression of Nanog protein and predicts poor prognosis of non-small cell lung cancer

Although the prognostic roles of β-catenin expression in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) have been reported in several immunohistochemical (IHC) studies, the results were not consistent because some studies lack sufficient number of the positive cases or did not evaluate the subcellular localization features of the protein. In this study, we have evaluated the expression levels and subcellular localization of β-catenin and Nanog proteins IHC staining in tissue specimens from 309 patients with NSCLC, and explored their association with clinicopathological features and patient outcome. We showed that patients with negative expression of membranous beta-catenin had a trend towards shorter survival (p=0.064) than those with positive expression. In contrast to previous studies, we found that increased expression of either cytoplasmic or nuclear β-catenin was strongly associated with poor prognosis and was an independent prognosticator for overall survival (p