Research Paper Volume 12, Issue 15 pp 15566—15580
The association between KLF4 as a tumor suppressor and the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma after curative resection
- 1 Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Anhui Medical University, Hefei, China
- 2 Department of Liver Surgery, Liver Cancer Institute, Zhongshan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- 3 Department of General Surgery, Huashan Hospital and Cancer Metastasis Institute, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- 4 Institute of Fudan Minhang Academic Health System, Minhang Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
Received: December 27, 2019 Accepted: June 13, 2020 Published: August 5, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.103592How to Cite
Copyright © 2020 Xue 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
Krüppel-like factor 4 (KLF4), a zinc-finger transcription factor in klfs family, is known for its crucial role in regulating cell growth, proliferation, and differentiation. This research aimed to explore the prognostic significance of KLF4 in hepatocellular carcinoma’s (HCC) patients after curative resection and the role of KLF4 in HCC progression. There were 185 HCC patients who had hepatectomy from July 2010 to July 2011 included in this study. KLF4 expression was detected by microarray immunohistochemical technique, western blot, and qRT-PCR. Then, the correlation between the prognosis of patients and KLF4 expression was evaluated based on patients’ follow-up data. The research found KLF4 expression was significantly downregulated in HCC tissues compared to para-tumorous tissues. More importantly, the overall survival rate (OS) and recurrence-free survival rate (RFS) of HCC patients with low KLF4 expression were both significantly decreased compared to those with a high level of KLF4. Further function and mechanism analysis showed that KLF4 could inhibit the proliferation, migration, invasion and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of HCC cells. The study revealed that KLF4 was not only a tumor suppressor in HCC but also can be regarded as a valuable prognostic factor and potential biological target for diagnosis and treatment in HCC patients.