Transplantation and Liver Surgery, Abdominal Center, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Hospital , Helsinki, Finland.
Research Programs Unit, Translational Cancer Medicine, University of Helsinki , Helsinki, Finland.
Cancer Biol Ther. 2020 Sep 1;21(9):826-831. doi: 10.1080/15384047.2020.1803008. Epub 2020 Aug 14.
Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer in the world. More than half of all affected patients develop liver metastases during the course of the disease, and over half experience recurrence despite radical primary surgery. Transketolase-like protein 1 (TKTL1) is a key enzyme in the glucose metabolism of cancer cells, and its expression in tumor tissue was previously shown to indicate a poor prognosis in colorectal cancer. In this study, we investigated the prognostic significance of TKTL1 in 111 patients with surgically resected colorectal liver metastases, with a minimum follow-up time of 10.3 years. TKTL1 expression was examined in tissue samples of both primary tumors and liver metastases, and compared to clinicopathological parameters, disease-free survival, and overall survival. We show that a high expression of TKTL1 in primary tumor tissue associated with poor disease-free survival in patients with synchronous liver metastases ( = .026, Kaplan-Meier log-rank test), but with better disease-free survival in patients with metachronous metastases, although not statistically significantly ( = .073). We found similar tendencies for TKTL1 expression in liver metastases. Thus, TKTL1 could serve as a candidate marker to identify patients who benefit from liver resection or who need more aggressive perioperative chemotherapy.
结直肠癌（CRC）是世界上第三大常见癌症。超过一半的患者在疾病过程中会发展为肝转移，尽管进行了根治性原发手术，仍有一半以上的患者复发。转酮醇酶样蛋白 1（TKTL1）是癌细胞葡萄糖代谢中的关键酶，其在肿瘤组织中的表达先前表明结直肠癌预后不良。在这项研究中，我们研究了 111 例接受手术切除的结直肠肝转移患者中 TKTL1 的预后意义，随访时间至少为 10.3 年。检测了原发肿瘤和肝转移组织样本中的 TKTL1 表达，并与临床病理参数、无病生存期和总生存期进行了比较。我们发现，原发肿瘤组织中 TKTL1 的高表达与同步肝转移患者的无病生存期不良相关（= 0.026，Kaplan-Meier 对数秩检验），但与异时性转移患者的无病生存期较好相关，尽管无统计学意义（= 0.073）。我们在肝转移中发现了 TKTL1 表达的相似趋势。因此，TKTL1 可以作为一种候选标志物，以识别受益于肝切除术或需要更积极围手术期化疗的患者。
