“…However, the functional role of autophagy in carcinogenesis is still unclear, that is, the role of autophagy, as a prosurvival mechanism to protect cancer cells from various forms of cellular stress, is supported by most accumulated evidence, whereas, paradoxically, the disruption of autophagyassociated genes has been shown to contribute to accelerated tumorigenesis under some conditions. 8,9 In recent years, there have been several studies reporting that the expression profiles of molecular markers consisting of the autophagy pathway could be used as useful predictors of clinical courses in several types of human malignant tumor [10][11][12][13][14] ; however, limited information is available on the prognostic significance of autophagy-related proteins in patients with PC. [15][16][17] Considering these findings, we evaluated the expression patterns of multiple autophagy-related proteins, including autophagy-related gene 5 (Atg5), autophagyrelated gene 9 (Atg9), Beclin1, microtubule-associated protein light chain 3 (LC3), and UNC-51elike kinase 1 (ULK1), in RP specimens from 160 patients with localized PC to analyze the prognostic significance of these markers in this cohort of patients.…”