Galectin-3 not Galectin-9 as a candidate prognosis marker for hepatocellular carcinoma

作者：Fei Kong, Meishan Jin, Donghui Cao, Zhifang Jia, Yawen Liu, Jing Jiang · 发表于：PeerJ · 年份：2020 · DOI：10.7717/peerj.9949 · 被引用次数：27 · 研究领域：Galectins and Cancer Biology、Glycosylation and Glycoproteins Research、Cancer Mechanisms and Therapy

Background Galectins (Gal) are a family of protein that bind to the β -galactoside of glycoproteins. It modulates a variety of biological functions, such as tumor growth, angiogenesis and tumor metastasis. A series of experimental and clinical evidences have been reported to support a correlation between galectin expressions and neoplastic transformation, progression and prognosis. The objective of this study was to estimate the expression of Gal-3 and Gal-9 in order to evaluate their relation to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) -related clinical features and their prognostic values. Methods We evaluated Gal-3 and Gal-9 expression in 247 HCC patients by a tissue microarray immunohistochemistry method, then analyzed the relationship between expression levels of Gal-3 and Gal-9 protein and tumor parameters or clinical outcomes. Results The Gal-3 expression was significantly higher in tumor tissues compared with adjacent non-tumor tissues ( P < 0.001), while no significant differences of Gal-9 was detected ( P = 0.222). A higher Gal-3 expression was significantly associated with lymph-vascular invasion ( P = 0.049), poor histological differentiation ( P = 0.016), and no cirrhosis ( P = 0.040). In contrast, a lower Gal-9 expression was related to lymph-vascular invasion ( P = 0.012) and poor histological differentiation ( P = 0.002). Survival analysis showed that patients with higher Gal-3 expression had worse overall survival ( P = 0.012) , however no correlation was found betw...