Gong Dao-Yin, Chen Xian, Yang Tian-Lin, Wang Yi, Guo Yu, Zeng Jin-Hao, Chen Shan-Ze
Department of Pathology, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan 610072, P.R. China.
Geriatric Department, Hospital of Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chengdu, Sichuan 610072, P.R. China.
Oncol Lett. 2020 Oct;20(4):54. doi: 10.3892/ol.2020.11915. Epub 2020 Jul 27.
Gastric cancer remains the third leading cause of cancer-associated mortality worldwide. The identification of prognostic indicators that are associated with clinical characteristics is urgently required. The aim of the present study was to determine the involvement of epithelial cell transforming 2 (ECT2) in gastric cancer. The results of the present study demonstrated that ECT2 expression was upregulated in human gastric cancer samples. Furthermore, high ECT2 expression was associated with advanced Tumor-Node-Metastasis stage and deeper tumor invasion. ECT2 upregulation was further confirmed in several independent publicly available clinical cohorts from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. In addition, patients with gastric cancer, with high ECT2 expression exhibited a significantly shorter overall survival time than those with low ECT2 expression, and Cox regression analysis demonstrated that ECT2 expression was an independent prognostic marker for overall survival time. Characterization of the transcriptome profiles of ECT2 upregulated gastric tumors indicated that ECT2 upregulation may be associated with transcriptional features of cancer stem cells (CSCs). Additionally, BUB1 mitotic checkpoint serine/threonine kinase and E2F transcription factor 7, two genes previously reported to account for the functionality of CSCs, were strongly enriched in ECT2 gastric cancer samples. Taken together, the results of the present study suggest that ECT2 may serve as a novel marker for CSCs and may be a potential prognostic indicator in gastric cancer.
胃癌仍然是全球癌症相关死亡的第三大主要原因。迫切需要确定与临床特征相关的预后指标。本研究的目的是确定上皮细胞转化2（ECT2）在胃癌中的作用。本研究结果表明，ECT2在人类胃癌样本中的表达上调。此外，ECT2高表达与肿瘤-淋巴结-转移（TNM）分期进展和肿瘤浸润深度相关。ECT2上调在来自基因表达综合数据库的几个独立公开临床队列中得到进一步证实。此外，ECT2高表达的胃癌患者的总生存时间明显短于ECT2低表达的患者，Cox回归分析表明，ECT2表达是总生存时间的独立预后标志物。对ECT2上调的胃肿瘤转录组谱的表征表明，ECT2上调可能与癌症干细胞（CSC）的转录特征相关。此外，BUB1有丝分裂检查点丝氨酸/苏氨酸激酶和E2F转录因子7这两个先前报道的与CSC功能相关的基因，在ECT2胃癌样本中高度富集。综上所述，本研究结果表明，ECT2可能作为CSC的一种新标志物，并且可能是胃癌的潜在预后指标。
