Low levels are correlated with poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma.

BACKGROUND

Previous reports show that phospholipase C epsilon-1 () expression is positively correlated with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and gastric cardia adenocarcinomas; however, the expression of in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its correlation with clinical outcome still remain unclear. The aim of this study was to explore the expression of in HCC tissue and to determine whether was a prognostic factor for HCC patients.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

levels in 20 paired HCC tissues and corresponding paracarcinomatous tissues was investigated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction and Western blot assays. In addition, protein levels of in one normal liver epithelial cell and four HCC cell lines were examined using Western blot assay. Moreover, immunohistochemistry was applied to determine the expression of in HCC and corresponding surrounding tissues from 90 patients. Statistical analyses were used to examine the association between levels and clinicopathological features.

RESULTS

We found that the expression of in tumor tissues was significantly lower than those in paracarcinomatous tissues at both mRNA and protein levels (<0.05). We also determined that protein expression levels were lower in HCC cell lines than normal liver epithelial cells (<0.05). Notably, immunohistochemical assay showed that expression was significantly low in HCC tissues compared with the adjacent normal liver tissues (40% vs 18.9%; <0.05). Besides, levels were negatively correlated with tumor capsulae, vascular invasion, Edmondson grade, alpha-fetoprotein, and tumor-node-metastasis stage (<0.05). Univariate analysis revealed that lower level expression of was significantly associated with poorer overall survival (OS) rate (<0.001) and disease-free survival rate (<0.001). Multivariate analysis revealed that low level was an independent poor prognostic factor of OS and recurrence-free survival (<0.001 and =0.003, respectively).

CONCLUSION

In brief, our results revealed that decreased expression was associated with tumor progression in HCC and may function as a promising biomarker for HCC prognosis.