High Expression of Forkhead Box Protein C2 is Related to Poor Prognosis in Human Gliomas

Background: Increasing evidence has indicated that high Forkhead box protein C2 (FOXC2) level is closelyassociated with the development, progression, and poor prognosis of a variety of tumors. However, the relationshipbetween FOXC2 and the progression of human gliomas remains to be clarified. The aim of present study was toassess FOXC2 expression and to explore its contribution in human gliomas. Materials and
Methods: Realtimequantitative PCR was performed to examine FOXC2 expression in 85 pairs of fresh frozen glioma tissues andcorresponding non-neoplastic brain tissues. Associations of FOXC2 expression with clinicopathological factorsand prognosis of glioma patients were statistically analyzed.
Results: The relative mRNA expression of FOXC2was significantly higher in glioma tissues than the corresponding non-neoplastic brain tissues (p<0.001). Inaddition, high FOXC2 expression was significantly associated with advanced pathological grade (P=0.005) andthe low Karnofsky performance score (KPS) (p=0.003), correlating with poor survival (p<0.001). Furthermore,multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that high FOXC2 expression was an independent predictor of overallsurvival (p=0.006).
Conclusions: FOXC2 may act as an oncogenic gene and represent a potential regulator ofaggressive development and a candidate prognostic marker in human gliomas.