Effects of JWA, XRCC1 and BRCA1 mRNA expression on molecular staging for personalized therapy in patients with advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

DNA damage repair genes JWA, XRCC1 and BRCA1 were associated with clinical outcomes and could convert the response to the cisplatin-based therapy in some carcinomas. The synergistic effects of JWA, XRCC1 and BRCA1 mRNA expression on personalized therapy remain unknown in advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). We employed quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) to determine the expression of JWA, XRCC1 and BRCA1 mRNA in paraffin-embedded specimen from 172 patients with advanced ESCC who underwent the first-line cisplatin-or docetaxel-based treatments. High JWA or XRCC1mRNA expression was correlated with longer median overall survival (mOS) in all the patients (both P < 0.001) or in subgroups with different regimens (all P < 0.05), but not correlated with response rate (RR, all P > 0.05). Multivariate analysis revealed that high JWA (HR 0.22; 95% CI 0.13-0.37; P < 0.001) or XRCC1 (HR 0.36; 95% CI 0.21-0.63; P < 0.001) mRNA expression emerged as the independent prognostic factors for ESCC patients in this cohort. But no significant difference in prognostic efficacy was found between JWA plus XRCC1 and JWA alone through ROC analysis. Further subgroup analysis showed cisplatin-based treatments could improve mOS of patients with low JWA expression (P < 0.05), especially in those with low BRCA1 expression simultaneously (P < 0.001); while in patients with high JWA expression, high BRCA1 mRNA expression was correlated with increased mOS in docetaxel-based treatments (P = 0.044). JWA, XRCC1and BRCA1 mRNA expression could be used as predictive markers in molecular staging for personalized therapy in patients with advanced ESCC who received first-line cisplatin- or docetaxel-based treatments. The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12885-015-1364-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users