Cabiati Manuela, Gaggini Melania, De Simone Paolo, Del Ry Silvia
Institute of Clinical Physiology, National Research Council CNR, Via Giuseppe Moruzzi 1, 56124, Pisa, Italy.
Hepatobiliary Surgery and Liver Transplantation, University of Pisa Medical School Hospital, Pisa, Italy.
Clin Exp Med. 2021 Nov;21(4):555-562. doi: 10.1007/s10238-021-00714-y. Epub 2021 Apr 27.
The long pentraxin (PTX) 3 and the neuronal pentraxin (NPTX) 2 has been found to exert pleiotropic roles in cancers due to their action in inflammation. However, the accurate clinical significance of PTX3 and NPTX2 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), one of the commonest cancers in the world has not been well-defined. The aim of the study was to analyze the expression profile of PTX3 and NPTX2 in liver biopsies of HCV-positive HCC patients (liver recipients, LR, n = 14, age 59.4 ± 1.8 years) undergoing liver transplantation and in donors (LD, n = 14, age 62.1 ± 17.3 years), trying both to identify them as predictive biomarkers of clinical liver severity in HCC patients and to understand if they were mutually substitutable. The PTX3 and NPTX2 transcripts were significantly up regulated in HCC tissues (p = 0.004 and p = 0.02 LD vs. LR, respectively). Dividing patients following MELD score, PTX3 expression increased as a function of liver disease severity, while this trend was not observed for NPTX2, which mRNA level increased similarly in both MELD group, reaching the significance only in patients with MELD score < 9 (p = 0.01). A positive correlation was found between PTX3 and NPTX2 expression (p = 0.001; r = 0.69). This is the first study that concerns PTX3 and NPTX2 as a function of clinical severity from which emerged that both of them are unequivocally involved in HCC, but only PTX3 could be considered a staging marker in these HCV-related HCC patients, unlike NPTX2, which could only play a role as an inflammatory marker.
由于长链五聚体蛋白（PTX）3和神经元五聚体蛋白（NPTX）2在炎症中的作用，它们已被发现可在癌症中发挥多效性作用。然而，PTX3和NPTX2在世界上最常见的癌症之一——肝细胞癌（HCC）中的准确临床意义尚未明确界定。本研究的目的是分析接受肝移植的HCV阳性HCC患者（肝受体，LR，n = 14，年龄59.4±1.8岁）和供体（LD，n = 14，年龄62.1±17.3岁）肝脏活检中PTX3和NPTX2的表达谱，既试图将它们鉴定为HCC患者临床肝脏严重程度的预测生物标志物，又试图了解它们是否相互替代。PTX3和NPTX2转录本在HCC组织中显著上调（LD与LR相比，p分别为0.004和0.02）。根据终末期肝病模型（MELD）评分对患者进行分组，PTX3表达随肝病严重程度增加而升高，而NPTX2未观察到这种趋势，其mRNA水平在两个MELD组中相似增加，仅在MELD评分<9的患者中达到显著水平（p = （0.01）。PTX3和NPTX2表达之间存在正相关（p = 0.001；r = 0.69）。这是第一项关于PTX3和NPTX2与临床严重程度关系的研究，结果表明它们都明确参与了HCC，但与NPTX2不同，只有PTX3可被视为这些HCV相关HCC患者的分期标志物，NPTX2仅可作为炎症标志物发挥作用。
