The Clinicopathological Significance and Prognostic Value of Obg-Like Atpase 1 (OLA1) in Gastric Cancer

Backgroud Obg-like ATPase 1 (OLA1) is a member of the Obg family of P-loop NTPases and has recently been detected in several human cancer cells. However, its expression type and clinical relevance in gastric cancer remains unclear. Methods In the present study, 2 datasets downloaded from the open Gene Expression Omnibus database were used to evaluate the mRNA level of OLA1 in gastric cancer. Quantitative Reverse Transcription PCR further validated the mRNA expression in gastric cancer tissues. Immunohistochemistry was performed on gastric cancer tissue microarray to assess OLA1 protein expression type, prognostic value, biological significance and its association with Snail in 334 patients of gastric cancer. The prognostic value of combination of OLA1 and Snail has been evaluated. Results The results showed that OLA1 mRNA and protein were elevated in gastric cancer tissues. High expression of OLA1 was significantly associated with aggressive features, such as tumor size, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage (P = 0.0146, P = 0.0037, P < 0.001, respectively). Moreover, high levels of OLA1 predicted worse overall survival. Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that high expression of OLA1 was an independent prognostic factor for poor overall survival (hazard ratio, 0.573; 95% confidence interval, 0.376–0.872; P = 0.009). Additionally, OLA1 expression was positively correlated with Snail, and combination of them revealed improved prognostic accuracy for gastric cancer patients. Conclusions Our results suggested that OLA1 high expression was considered as an independent factor for the prediction of unfavorable prognosis in gastric cancer patients, and we believe that OLA1 could serve as a biomarker of poor prognosis and a novel target in treating gastric cancers.