5036 Background: Approximately 40,880 new cases of uterine cancer are diagnosed in the U.S. annually resulting in 7,310 deaths. Uterine cancer is surgically staged and 75% of patients present with stage I disease. Patients with stage I tumors with intermediate to high risk factors have a recurrence rate of 20 to 30%. Serum CA125 is elevated in 75% of patients with advanced stage disease and in only 17% of patients with early stage disease. The use of CA125 for the detection of recurrent disease is limited at best. Only 25% of patients with asymptomatic recurrent disease have an elevated CA125. A better marker indicating early recurrent disease is needed. The objective of this study was to examine the value of a novel serum tumor marker HE4 in endometrial cancer. Methods: Serum samples from two prospective IRB approved studies at two institutions were analyzed to compare HE4 with CA125 in patients who had surgical staging for uterine cancer. Normal controls were obtained from healthy patients. Informed consent was obtained from all patients and blood samples were drawn pre-operatively. HE4 and CA125 levels were determined using assays from Fujirebio Diagnostic Inc. ROC curves were constructed for each tumor marker and the sensitivity at a set specificity of 95% was determined. Results: Serum from 156 controls and 233 patients with surgically staged endometrial cancer; (151 stage I, 21 stage II, 47 stage III and 14 stage IV) were examined. The area under the ROC curves (ROC-AUC) for HE4 and CA125 were determined and compared ( Table1 ). At 95% specificity, the sensitivity for differentiation of controls versus all stages was 44.9% for HE4 compared to 25.2% for CA125 (p = 0.0001). For stage I cases, HE4 showed an improvement in the sensitivity of 20.5% compared to CA125 (37.1% vs 16.6%, p = 0.0001). Conclusions: HE4 is elevated in all stages of endometrial cancer and has a greater sensitivity for discrimination from normal controls compared to CA125. As well, HE4 is elevated in early stage endometrial cancer and should be investigated as a marker for early recurrent disease. [Table: see text] [Table: see text]

AimLiver cancer is a common malignant tumor whose molecular pathogenesis remains unclear. This study attempts to identify key genes related to liver cancer by bioinformatics analysis and analyze their biological functions.MethodsThe gene expression data of the microarray were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) database. The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were then identified by the R software package “limma” and were subjected to gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses using DAVID. The protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed via String, and the results were visualized in Cytoscape. Modules and hub genes were identified using the MCODE plugin, while the expression of hub genes and its effects were analyzed by GEPIA2. Additionally, the co-expression of the hub gene was explored in String, while the GO results were visualized using the R software. Finally, the targets of the hub gene were predicted through an online website. ResultsIn total, 43 differentially expressed genes were obtained. The GO analysis was mainly concentrated in the redox process and nuclear mitosis, while the KEGG pathway analysis was mainly enriched in retinol metabolism and the cell cycle. Moreover, four hub genes were identified in the PPI network, however, the Kaplan-Meier risk curve showed that only ECT2 and FCN3 affected the survival of liver cancer. ECT2 was found to be high expressed in liver cancer, carrying out signal transduction and targeting hsa-miR-27a-3p. FCN3 was observed to be lowly expressed in liver cancer and related to the immune response, targeting hsa-miR132-5p.ConclusionThe obtained findings suggest that two genes are significantly related to the prognosis of liver cancer, and the analysis of their biological function provided novel insight into the pathogenesis of liver cancer. Furthermore, FCN3 may serve as a promising biomarker for patients with liver cancer.