High expression levels of CLEC4M indicate poor prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

The identification of novel and accurate biomarkers is important to improve the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). C-Type lectin domain family 4 member M (CLEC4M) is involved in the progression of numerous cancer types. However, the clinical significance of CLEC4M in HCC is yet to be elucidated. The aim of the present study is to evaluate the involvement of CLEC4M in HCC progression. The expression level of CLEC4M was determined in tumor, and their corresponding adjacent non-tumor tissues derived from 88 patients with HCC, using immunohistochemistry, western blot and reverse transcription-quantitative PCR. The correlation between CLEC4M expression and certain clinicopathological characteristics was retrospectively analyzed. The results suggested that CLEC4M was specifically labeled in sinusoidal endothelial cells, in both HCC and non-tumor tissues. Moreover, the expression of CLEC4M in tumor tissues was significantly lower than that in non-tumor tissues (P<0.0001), which indicated its potential as a biomarker of the development of HCC. Subsequently, correlation analysis suggested that the relatively higher CLEC4M expression in HCC tissues was significantly associated with increased microvascular invasion (P= 0.008), larger tumor size (P= 0.018), absence of tumor encapsulation (P<0.0001) and lower tumor differentiation (P= 0.019). Notably, patients with high CLEC4M expression levels in their tumor tissues experienced more frequent recurrence and shorter overall survival (OS) times compared with the low-expression group. Furthermore, CLEC4M expression in tumor tissues was identified as an independent and significant risk factor for recurrence-free survival and OS. The results of the present study suggest that CLEC4M may be a valuable biomarker for the prognosis of the patients with HCC, postoperatively.

Extraction of Genes and Transcripts Associated with Liver Cancer Using Machine Learning

“…Firstly, since the models got high scores by evaluating only the test data, which accounts for 30% of the total data, it is considered that overfitting did not occur. Secondly, CLEC4M [14], BIRC5 [15], TERT [16], SKA3 [17], CDC25C [18], TROAP [19], and FBXO43 [20], which affected the classification only by genes, are reported related to liver cancer. CDC20 [21], NEK2 [22], CDKN3 [23], RHEB [24], and NAA20 [25], which affected the classification only by the transcripts, are reported related to liver cancer.…”

Multi-omics data integration for hepatocellular carcinoma subtyping with multi-kernel learning

“…Some of the DEGs may serve as potential biomarkers of HCC. For example, CLEC4M and CYP2C8 have been reported as potential prognostic biomarkers in patients with HCC ( Li et al, 2019 ; Luo et al, 2020 ). Both PPOX and HMBS play key roles as tumor suppressors in the hepatocarcinogenesis ( Schneider-Yin et al, 2015 ).…”

“…Frontiers in Genetics frontiersin.org 08 biomarkers in patients with HCC (Li et al, 2019;Luo et al, 2020). Both PPOX and HMBS play key roles as tumor suppressors in the hepatocarcinogenesis (Schneider- Yin et al, 2015).…”

Identification of Diagnostic Biomarkers and Subtypes of Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma by Multi-Omics Data Analysis

“…Some of the 34 DEGs were reported as biomarkers of HCC. For example, CLEC4M, CYP2C8, and SFTA1P might be valuable biomarkers for the prognosis of HCC [30][31][32]. Calcyclin Binding Protein (CACYBP) expression was elevated in HCC and might serve as a promising therapeutic and prognostic biomarker [33].…”