Screening for proline‑rich protein 11 gene expression in cervical cancer: Use as a novel diagnostic biomarker and poor prognostic factor

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer affecting the female population worldwide, and it is associated with a late diagnosis and a poor prognosis. It is thus imperative to improve modern diagnostic methods by searching for novel tumor biomarkers, such as proline-rich protein 11 (PRR11), the expression of which is deregulated in various types of cancer and participates in their cellular progression. However, the involvement of PRR11 in cervical cancer has not yet been fully elucidated. The present study thus aimed to investigate the expression of PRR11 in cervical cancer as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker, and to characterize the associated clinicopathological features. For this purpose, reverse transcription-quantitative PCR was used to assess the mRNA expression level of PRR11 in 100 cervical cancer and corresponding adjacent normal tissues. Statistical analysis was then performed to determine the association between PRR11 expression and the clinicopathological data of patients, and the overall survival rate of patients. The results revealed that PRR11 gene expression in cervical cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in corresponding normal adjacent tissues. No significant differences were found between PRR11 gene expression, age at diagnosis, FIGO stage, or histological type. Patients with a positive PRR11 expression had a shorter survival rate (P=0.035). As regards the diagnostic value, the results demonstrated that PRR11 expression was able to differentiate cancerous from normal cervical tissue with a sensitivity of 88.75%, a specificity of 100%, an area under the curve of 0.982 and a Youden index of 88.7%. Thus, PRR11 satisfies the standard criteria to be applied in diagnosis. On the whole, the present study demonstrates that PRR11 is well-expressed in cervical cancer tissues, is related to age and a poor prognosis, and may thus serve as a potential novel biomarker for cervical cancer diagnosis.