Consistently, low PHLPP2 expression was significantly related to the advanced tumor clinical stage, poor differentiation and positive lymph node metastasis in hypopharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma.28 Although there was a trend of the correlation between low PHLPP2 expression and advanced pTNM stage in our study, there was no statistical significance. This evidence concerns the gene PHLPP2 and hypopharynx squamous cell carcinoma.