Overexpression of Rho GDP-dissociation inhibitor alpha predicts poor survival in oral squamous cell carcinoma

Oral cancer has emerged as one of the fastest growing malignancies in Taiwan. However, biomarkers that reliably predict clinical outcomes have yet to be identified. This study was aimed to identify tumor-associated proteins that could be prognostic biomarkers for oral cancer. We compared the protein expression between oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) tissues and adjacent non-cancerous matched tissues (NCMTs) by proteomics. We found that Rho GDP-dissociation inhibitor alpha (RhoGDIα) was differentially expressed in frozen cancerous samples and OSCC cell lines but not in NCMTs. Furthermore, our results indicated that RhoGDIα was selectively upregulated in 78 OSCC tissue sections (p < 0.001), and this high expression was significantly correlated with increased tumor size (p < 0.05) and poor overall survival (p < 0.01). There was a trend that RhoGDIα expression was localized in the cytoplasm of cancer cells but was localized in the plasma membrane of NCMTs. Finally, expression of RhoGDIα was validated to be an independent prognostic indicator for overall survival (p < 0.01). These results have identified a novel biomarker that may be useful for prediction of poor prognosis in OSCC patients.