Consequently, deregulation of galectin expression is frequently associated with an inadequate immune response which contributes to different pathologies, including cancer. In addition, galectins have been found to mediate tumor cell metastasis and to induce and maintain tumor angiogenesis which further adds to cancer progression. All this has resulted in the recognition of galectins as diagnostic and prognostic WY 14643 markers in different cancer types, including lung cancer. For example, increased galectin-3 expression has been described as an indicator of poor prognosis in NSCLC patients. Similar observations were reported for galectin-1 expression. Furthermore, galectin-1 expression is elevated in lung cancer tissue as compared to normal lung. More recently, elevated levels of galectin-1 expression were found to promote lung cancer progression and chemoresistance while increased galectin-4 expression was shown to predict lymph node metastasis in adenocarcinoma of the lung. All these findings illustrate the prognostic potential of galectins in lung cancer. However, whether galectin expression can also be used to distinguish between early stage NSCLC patients with good or bad prognosis has not been well established. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine whether measurement of galectin mRNA expression could serve as a predictor of clinical outcome in patients with stage I/II NSCLC using a multivariable model. We evaluated the prognostic significance of galectin mRNA expression in patients with stage I/II non-small cell lung cancer. Univariable Cox regression analyses were used to select a set of the most prognostic clinical parameters and galectins. These were subsequently used in a multivariable analysis to generate a model that could serve to predict OS or DFS in patients with stage I/II NSCLC. Galectins have previously been associated with lung cancer progression. Our observation that patients that express galectin-1 above median levels have a significant shorter overall is in agreement with these studies as well as with studies in other types of cancer. The prognostic value of galectin-1 was confirmed in the multivariable analysis. Galectin-3, which has also been associated with poor disease outcome in lung cancer patients, did not reach statistical significance in our patient group. This corroborates with two more recent studies. On the other hand, it has been suggested that cellular localization of galectin-3, i.e. nuclear vs. cytoplasmic might be of prognostic value for recurrence. We only measured galectin-3 mRNA expression levels and did not determine the cellular localization of galectin-3 protein expression in our patient group. Thus, we cannot exclude that these parameters could be of prognostic value in stage I/II NSCLC patients. A novel finding of the current study was the identification of a specific gal-9 splice variant, i.e. galectin-9D5 as a prognostic marker in NSCLC. Using multivariable Cox regression analysis we now observed that low galectin-9D5 expression was associated with poor OS and DFS in early stage NSCLC patients.