High expression of CSE1L is associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer

Cellular apoptosis susceptibility (chromosome segregation 1-like, CSE1L) is a microtubule-associated protein that is highly expressed in various cancers. In this study, CSE1L expression was evaluated in 81 normal tissues and 370 breast cancer tissues via immunohistochemical staining (IHC). The associations between CSE1L expression and clinicopathological features were evaluated. Additionally, Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression models were utilized to determine the correlation between CSE1L expression and prognosis. Our study shows that the nuclear and cytoplasmic expression levels of CSE1L in breast cancer tissues are significantly higher than those in normal tissues. High nuclear CSE1L expression is positively correlated with tumor size (P = 0.014), lymph node metastasis (P = 0.018), stage (P < 0.001) and poorer overall survival (P = 0.011). Furthermore, multivariate Cox regression analysis shows that high nuclear CSE1L expression is an independent prognostic factor in patients with breast cancer (P = 0.039). These results indicate that high CSE1L expression may be a biomarker for breast cancer prognosis.