Phosphotriesterase-related protein as a novel prognostic predictor for hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth incidence of cancer and the third leading cause of cancer mortality in the world. Facing the ever-increasing population of HCC patients, there is still an urgent need to find good diagnostic and prognostic markers to explore new therapeutic targets. Phosphotriesterase-related (PTER) protein, an expressed protein in the liver and injured or ploycystic kidneys, was reported to be correlated with serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT). Our study aimed to investigate the expression of PTER protein in HCC patients and the association between PTER protein expression with clinicopathological features of HCC.

Western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were performed in paired para-tumor and liver tumor tissues and HCC tissue microarray (TMA) to detect PTER protein expression. Correlation between PTER protein and prognostic factors were analyzed through univariate and multivariate analysis.

We identified that PTER protein was significantly up-regulated in HCC tumors. Our data revealed that high PTER protein expression was associated with aggressive clinicopathological features of HCC, such as advanced tumor staging, vascular invasion, recurrence, and shorter overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) time. Besides, in multivariate analyses, PTER protein was an independent predictor for OS (P=0.004) and DFS (P=0.013) for HCC patients. Meanwhile, the prognosis of patients with high PTER protein is much worse than those with low PTER protein expression.

PTER protein expression is raised in HCC tissues and may be a potential prognostic predictor for HCC patients.