Clinical Significance of TUBGCP4 Expression in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

We aim to investigate the expression and clinical significance of the tubulin gamma complex-associated protein 4 (TUBGCP4) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). The mRNA expression of TUBGCP4 in HCC tissues was analyzed using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Paired HCC and adjacent nontumor tissues were obtained from HCC patients to measure the protein expression of TUBGCP4 by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and to analyze the relationship between TUBGCP4 protein expression and the clinicopathological characteristics and the prognosis of HCC patients. We found that TUBGCP4 mRNA expression was upregulated in HCC tissues from TCGA database. IHC analysis showed that TUBGCP4 was positively expressed in 61.25% (49/80) of HCC tissues and 77.5% (62/80) of adjacent nontumor tissues. The Chi-square analysis indicated that the positive rate of TUBGCP4 expression between HCC tissues and the adjacent nontumor tissues was statistically different ( P < 0.05 ). Furthermore, we found that TUBGCP4 protein expression was correlated with carbohydrate antigen (CA-199) levels of HCC patients ( P < 0.05 ). Further, survival analysis showed that the overall survival time and tumor-free survival time in the TUBGCP4 positive group were significantly higher than those of the negative group ( P < 0.05 ), indicating that the positive expression of TUBGCP4 was related to a better prognosis of HCC patients. COX model showed that TUBGCP4 was an independent prognostic factor for HCC patients. Our study indicates that TUBGCP4 protein expression is downregulated in HCC tissues and has a relationship with the prognosis of HCC patients.

Molecular Basis of Unequal Alternative Splicing of Human SCD5 and Its Alteration by Natural Genetic Variations

“…Since the level of certain endogenous controls may vary between tissue types, we used three different control genes and detected very similar expression patterns, which highly increases the reliability of our results ( Figure 2 D and Figure S2 ). Although the hepatic delta9 desaturase expression is undoubtedly high, its extreme value, when normalized to Tubulin ( Figure S2A ), is likely due to the relatively low and variable expression of this control gene in the liver [ 40 , 41 ]. In addition to comparing between tissues, we also focused on determining the proportion of SCD1 , SCD5A and SCD5B within each tissue ( Figure 2 F).…”