Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of glypican-3 overexpression in hepatocellular carcinoma: A meta-analysis

AIM: To investigate the prognostic and clinicopathological significance of glypican-3 (GPC3) overexpression in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). METHODS: Publications were searched using PubMed, EMBASE, the Cochrane Library and the Chinese Biomedical Literature Database up to March 2013. Inclusion and exclusion criteria were established to screen eligible studies for meta-analysis. The hazard ratios (HRs) of the eligible studies were pooled using RevMan 5.2 software to evaluate the impact of GPC3 overexpression on overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in HCC patients. The correlation between GPC3 expression and clinicopathological parameters of HCC was also analyzed. RESULTS: A total of five studies with 493 patients were included in the meta-analysis. The combined HRs indicated that GPC3 overexpression can predict poor OS (n = 362 in 3 studies, HR = 2.18, 95%CI: 1.47-3.24, Z = 3.86, P = 0.0001) and DFS (n = 325 in 3 studies, HR = 2.05, 95%CI: 1.43-2.93, Z = 3.94, P < 0.0001) in HCC patients without heterogeneity. Egger's and Begg's tests were applied to detect publication bias, and the results showed that there was no evidence of publication bias detected in the OS studies (the P value for Egger's test was 0.216) or DFS studies (the P value for Egger's test was 0.488). The combined odds ratios (ORs) suggested that GPC3 expression tends to be associated with tumor vascular invasion (OR = 2.74, 95%CI: 1.15-6.52, P = 0.02), hepatic cirrhosis (OR = 2.10, 95%CI: 1.31-3.36, P = 0.002), poor tumor differentiation (OR = 0.22, 95%CI: 0.13-0.40, P < 0.00001) and advanced TNM stage (OR = 0.31, 95%CI: 0.18-0.51, P < 0.00001). CONCLUSION: From this study, we conclude that GPC3 overexpression tends to be associated with a poor prognosis (poor OS or DFS) in HCC. (C) 2014 Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.

Prognostic significance of preoperative fibrinogen in patients with colon cancer

AIM: To investigate the prognostic significance of preoperative fibrinogen levels in colon cancer patients.

Clinical significance of matrix metalloproteinase-9 expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

AIM: To evaluate the expression of matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) and its clinical significance in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). METHODS: The expression of MMP-9 in 208 cases of ESCC was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and its clinical significance in ESCC especially the relationship with the clinicopathological parameters was analyzed. RESULTS: The percentage of positive cases for MMP-9 detected by IHC was 49.0%. MMP-9 was mainly expressed in the cytoplasm of cancer cells especially in the invasive front. Only weak expression was detected in the stromal cells and no expression in non-cancerous mucosa. The expression of MMP-9 was positively correlated with poorer differentiation (P= 0.001<0.01), existence of vessel permeation (P= 0.027<0.05) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.027<0.05). CONCLUSION: The expression of MMP-9 correlates with the cancer cell differentiation, vessel permeation and lymph node metastasis. It may be a novel biomarker for the diagnosis and treatment of ESCC.

Predictors of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for triple-negative breast cancer:a meta-analysis with 723 cases

Objective: Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) was increasingly used as a systemic therapy for triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC). The pathological complete response (PCR) rates of neoadjuvant chemotherapy in TNBC were higher than other types of breast cancer with fluctuate data. Predictors to identify which subgroup TNBC was more likely to achieve PCR in neoadjuvant chemotherapy would give us some hints on how to improve outcomes of TNBC patients. The meta-analysis was conducted to contrast the prognostic function of some clinicopathological parameters in the PCR rates of neoadjuvant chemotherapy for TNBC. Methods: Studies were selected from the PubMed database. The relevant parameters to PCR rates in TNBC group were recorded. Review Manager and MIX were used to estimate prognostic function of some biological markers and clinicopathological parameters in PCR rates of TNBC. Results: The analysis included 6 studies with 723 patients, the aggregate PCR rate was 27.9% in TNBC group. The association of lymph nodes metastasis, Ki-67 expression, p53 expression and CK5/6 expression with PCR rate of TNBC was investigated in the analysis, and the odds ratios were 0.50, 9.87, 1.17 and 0.53 respectively. Conclusion: This meta-analysis demonstrated that Ki-67 expression and lymph nodes metastasis were predictors of PCR rate for TNBC in neoadjuvant chemotherapy, while p53 and CK5/6 expression could not be confirmed for the prognostic function.

Nibrin expression in oral squamous cell carcinoma:association with clinicopathological parameters

Aim:The present study sought to discover the role of Nibrin protein in 100 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma(OSCC)and its potential relationship with clinicopathological parameters.Methods:Nibrin expression was evaluated immunohistochemically using the modified H-score method.Results:The present study included 20%of patients with stage I disease,22%of patients with stage II disease,18%of patients with stage III disease,and 40%of patients with stage IV disease.Nibrin showed a significant positive correlation with moderately/poorly differentiated tumor tissues(P=0.028),while significant inverse correlation of Nibrin expression was observed with tumor size(P=0.018)and tumor stage(P=0.039).Further,using univariate survival analysis it was observed that strong Nibrin expression was significantly associated with disease relapse in early stage OSCC patients(P=0.049).Conclusion:Thus,the present study revealed that Nibrin could be used as a prognostic marker in patients with early stage OSCC.

DNA Copy Number Aberrations in Breast Cancer by Array Comparative Genomic Hybridization

Array comparative genomic hybridization （CGH） has been popularly used for analyzing DNA copy number variations in diseases like cancer. In this study, we investigated 82 sporadic samples from 49 breast cancer patients using 1-Mb resolution bacterial artificial chromosome （2GH arrays. A number of highly frequent genomic aberrations were discovered, which may act as ＂drivers＂ of tumor progression. Meanwhile, the genomic profiles of four ＂normal＂ breast tissue samples taken at least 2 cm away from the primary tumor sites were also found to have some genomic aberrations that recurred with high frequency in the primary tumors, which may have important implications for clinical therapy. Additionally, we performed class comparison and class prediction for various clinicopathological parameters, and a list of characteristic genomic aberrations associated with different clinicopathological phenotypes was compiled. Our study provides clues for further investigations of the underlying mechanisms of breast carcinogenesis.