Our method showed good sensitivity/specificity to indicate the outcome of patients according to their cofilin immunocontent in biological samples. Its application in a retrospective cohort and the results presented here are an important step toward the validation process of cofilin-1 as a prognostic biomarker.

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for nearly 1 million deaths annually, worldwide. Conventional treatments offer limited benefits and patients have a survival rate of approximately 1 year. A biomarker for NSCLC could provide the potential benefits of early diagnosis, prognosis and could lead to important applications such as drug targeting. In a search for a biomarker with prognostic value, we reviewed the literature and tested potential biomarkers by performing a meta-data analysis using public databank of NSCLC biopsies containing gene expression data and clinical and pathologic information from 111 patients. We generated standard Kaplan-Meier mortality curves by clustering patients according to either biomarker expression levels or NSCLC stage grouping. Our statistical analyses show that all 60 potential biomarkers analyzed here have no prognostic value for NSCLC patient outcome.