High expression of Rap2A is associated with poor prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Rap2A is overexpressed in a multitude of human cancers and plays an important role in cytoskeleton rearrangement, arteriogenesis and cell migration. However, its role and function in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not yet been explored. Here, we aimed to investigate the expression of Rap2A in HCC and the relationship between Rap2A and clinicopathologic features of patients. Western blot and quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR) showed that Rap2A was remarkably upregulated in HCC tissues compared to adjacent normal liver tissues. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) showed that Rap2A was mainly localized in the cytoplasm rather than nuclei in HCC tissues. Overexpression of Rap2A was significantly correlated with tumor size (P=0.019), metastasis (P=0.002), pathological differentiation (P=0.028) and vascular invasion (P=0.017) in HCC. Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that HCC patients with high Rap2A expression had shorter overall survival time than those with low Rap2A expression (P=0.011). Furthermore, High level of Rap2A was a risk factor for HCC patients according to Cox's proportional hazard regression (P=0.026). In summary, our results suggest that high expression of Rap2A is involved in HCC progression and might be a novel prognostic indicator for patients.