Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (iCCA) is a highly
malignant neoplasm arising from the intrahepatic bile ducts. As a scaffold
protein of
lipid rafts,
flotillin-2 is upregulated in several types of
cancer and promotes
tumor progression and
metastasis. To the best of our knowledge, the present study was the first to detect the upregulation of
flotillin-2 in iCCA tissues compared with matched adjacent non-
tumor tissues. In addition, immunohistochemistry was used to investigate the expression of
flotillin-2 in a microarray consisting of 92 iCCA tissues. A total of 59 samples (64.1%) exhibited high
flotillin-2 expression, which was significantly related to
lymph node metastasis (P=0.029) and
tumor-node-
metastasis stage (P=0.016). Further in vitro study demonstrated that knockdown of
flotillin-2 inhibited the invasive capability of iCCA cell lines, further supporting the participation of
flotillin-2 in
cancer invasion and
metastasis. Moreover, Kaplan-Meier analysis showed patients with high
flotillin-2 expression had worse overall survival outcomes. The multivariate Cox proportional hazards model further revealed that high
flotillin-2 expression was an independent
indicator (P=0.005) of poor prognosis for patients with iCCA. Collectively, the present study revealed that as a promoter of invasion and an independent marker of poor prognosis,
flotillin-2 may serve as a potential target for the development of novel therapeutic agents for iCCA.