Evaluation of the SC/ASC patients using a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that differentiation, tumor size, TNM stage, lymph node metastasis, invasion and surgical procedure (P<0.001) were significantly associated with average survival time (Table IV), and the average survival time of the TSG101- and PEG10-positive patients was significantly lower than that of the patients with a negative result for TSG101 and PEG10 expression (P<0.001; Table IV and Fig. 3). This evidence concerns the gene PEG10 and metastatic malignant neoplasm in the lymph nodes.