Objective      To investigate the expression level of an important autophagy-related factor Beclin-1 in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and its clinical significance.       Methods      The specimens of carcinoma tissues and their paired para-carcinoma tissues collected from 150 NSCLC patients were made into tissue microarray. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was applied to detect the expression level of Beclin-1 in these specimens. The correlation between the expression level of Beclin-1 and the survive rate of patients with NSCLC was analyzed.       Results      The positive expression rate of Be

clin-1 in the carcinoma tissues (26.00%) was significantly lower than that in the para-carcinoma tissues (82.00%) (

P

0.05)

and the positive expression rate of Beclin-1 in squamous cell carcinoma tissues (34.66%) was significantly higher than that in the adenocarcinoma tissues (17.34%) (

P

0.05). However

no evidence showed the expression rate of Beclin-1 was correlated with sex

age

degrees of differentiation

lymph node metastasis and distant metastasis (

P

0.05). The survive rate of the NSCLC patients with negative expression of Beclin-1 was significantly lower than that of the NSCLC patients with positive expression of Beclin-1 (

P

0.05).       Conclusion      Beclin-1 may be used as a new target for NSCLC treatment and as a potential indicator for pathological diagnosis and prognostic prediction of NSCLC.