Aging
Navigate
Submit an Article
Research Paper|Volume 10, Issue 1|pp 115—130

HOXC6 predicts invasion and poor survival in hepatocellular carcinoma by driving epithelial-mesenchymal transition

Pin-Dong Li1, Peng Chen1, Xin Peng1, Charlie Ma2, Wen-Jie Zhang3, Xiao-Fang Dai1
  • 1Cancer Center, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
  • 2Department of Radiation Oncology, Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, PA 19111, USA
  • 3Department of Pathology, Shihezi University School of Medicine, Shihezi, Xinjiang 832002, China
Received: December 12, 2017Accepted: January 10, 2018Published: January 15, 2018
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101363

Copyright: © 2018 Li et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Aberrant expression of HOXC6 has been reported in several malignant tumors, yet little is known about the value of HOXC6 in invasion and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). HOXC6 expression was positively correlated with high AFP level, liver cirrhosis, larger tumor, vascular invasion and BCLC stage. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that HOXC6 was an independent predictor for overall survival (OS) and time to recurrence (TTR). In addition, HOXC6 status could act as prognostic predictor in different risk subgroups. Moreover, HOXC6 maintained its prognostic value in different ability of invasiveness. Furthermore, combination of HOXC6 and serum AFP could be a potential predictor for survival in HCC patients. Additionally, further study showed that HOXC6 may promote invasion of HCC by driving epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Knockdown of HOXC6 significantly decreased the migration and invasion of HCC cells and changed the expression pattern of EMT markers. An opposite expression pattern of EMT markers was observed in HOXC6-transfected cells. In addition, immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR results further confirmed this correlation. In conclusion, HOXC6 contributes to invasion by inducing EMT pathway and predicts poor prognosis of HCC. HOXC6/AFP expression may help to distinguish the different risks of HCC patients after hepatectomy.