Expression of c-fos Was Associated with Clinicopathologic Characteristics and Prognosis in Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract

It has long been regarded that pancreatic cancer (PC) is a life-threatening malignant tumor. Thus, much attention has been paid for factors, especially relative molecules, predictive for prognosis of PC. However, c-fos expression in PC was less investigated. In addition, its association with clinicopathologic variables and prognosis remains unknown. In the present study, expression of c-fos was detected by tissue microarray-based immunohistochemical staining in cancer and adjacent tissues from 333 patients with PC. The staining results were correlated with clinicopathologic parameters and overall survival. Furthermore, prognostic significance of c-fos in subsets of PC was also evaluated. It was shown that low expression of c-fos was more often in cancer than in adjacent tissues of PC (P<0.001). Besides, high cancerous c-fos expression was significantly associated with tumor site and T stage, whereas peri-neural invasion was of a borderline significant relevance. Log-rank test revealed that high expression of c-fos in cancer tissues was a significant marker of poor overall survival, accompanied by some conventional clinicopathologic variables, such as sex, grade, peri-neural invasion, T and N stages. More importantly, cancerous c-fos expression was identified as an independent prognosticator in multivariate analysis. Finally, the prognostic implication of c-fos expression was proven in four subsets of patients with PC. These data suggested that c-fos expression was of relationships with progression and dismal prognosis of PC.

Comprehensive analysis of normal adjacent to tumor transcriptomes

“…Previous studies have shown downregulation of the mRNA of these genes in different cancer types compared to NAT 33 , 34 . A study in pancreatic cancer showed higher levels of c-FOS protein in NAT compared with the pancreatic tumors 35 . Importantly, our results suggest that these genes are not, in fact, downregulated in the tumor itself but rather they are specifically activated in NAT, in contrast to previous studies.…”

Analysis of Transcription Factor-Related Regulatory Networks Based on Bioinformatics Analysis and Validation in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

“…Oliveira-Ferrer L et al reported that c-FOS overexpression increased the apoptotic potential of ovarian cancer cells and inhibited tumor growth and metastasis, which could be achieved by changing the adhesion of human ovarian cancer cell [ 33 ]. A study by Guo J et al showed that the expression of c-FOS in the tumor tissues of pancreatic cancer seemed to be lower than that in adjacent nontumor tissues [ 34 ]. However, some other research showed that FOS could contribute to carcinogenesis [ 35 , 36 ].…”

EGFR is required for FOS‐dependent bone tumor development via RSK2/CREB signaling

“…As bone tumors in H2-c-fosLTR mice arise from the osteoblastic lineage (Grigoriadis et al, 1993), we hypothesize that the tumor cellintrinsic function of EGFR might be similar to its role in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), where EGFR deletion or inhibition was shown to ameliorate KRAS-driven PDAC (Ardito et al, 2012;Navas et al, 2012). It would be of interest to address whether the molecular mechanisms in c-Fos-dependent OSs also hold true for KRAS-mutated PDACs in which c-Fos was also reported to be a major driver (Guo et al, 2015;You et al, 2016).…”