Overexpression of ARID4B predicts poor survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

AT-rich interaction domain 4B (ARID4B), which belongs to the ARID family, is heavily involved in cell growth and differentiation and is closely associated with many types of tumors. However, the role of this protein in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unknown. In this study, we used data from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus to analyze ARID4B expression in HCC. We subjected 15 pairs of fresh-frozen tissue samples to quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blotting analyses to investigate ARID4B expression. We also subjected 157 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded HCC tissue samples to immunohistochemical analysis to detect ARID4B expression and to determine the clinical significance of ARID4B expression in HCC. The bioinformatics analysis, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, and Western blotting results showed that ARID4B was highly expressed in HCC tissues compared with adjacent normal liver tissues. High ARID4B expression was strongly correlated with tumor number (P = .02), vascular invasion (P = .004), Edmondson-Steiner grades (P = .000), and tumor-node-metastasis stages (P = .001). Moreover, Kaplan-Meier and Cox proportional-hazards analyses indicated that high ARID4B expression was significantly associated with poor survival in patients with HCC and that ARID4B was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival and disease-free survival in patients with HCC. In conclusion, our results suggest that ARID4B acts as an oncogene in HCC and can therefore serve as a biomarker for the prognoses of patients with HCC.