The expression and prognostic significance of Aurora Kinase A in hepatocellular carcinoma / 中华肝胆外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To explore the expression of Aurora Kinase A (AURKA) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and its prognostic value.Methods:mRNA expression profiles and clinical data of HCC patients were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Expression of AURKA mRNA in HCC patients of TCGA database from normal liver tissue and all tumor tissues, normal tissues adjacent to cancer and matched tumor tissues were analyzed, and then expression of AURKA to was investigated in HCC tissues and normal liver tissues in the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database. According to the TNM stage information of HCC patients in TCGA database, expression of AURKA in different stages was analyzed. Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze whether the high and low expression of AURKA in HCC patients of TCGA database (with the median as the cut-off value) was significantly related to the length of survival. The RNA-seq expression profile data of HCC patients in the public resource platform of the Kaplan-Meier Plotter website was used for external verification. Cox univariate and multivariate analysis were performed on the age, sex, degree of differentiation, TNM stage, and AURKA mRNA expression of TCGA database patients.Results:374 cases of HCC tumor tissues and 50 cases of adjacent normal liver tissues in the TCGA database were included. All HCC tumor tissues in the TCGA database compared with the paired adjacent tissues mRNA level of AURKA was significantly increased, and the protein level was also increased, the difference was statistically significant ( P<0.05); With the tumor TNM stage increase of AURKA mRNA expression showed a gradual upward trend, and the difference was statistically significant ( P<0.05); in the TCGA database HCC cohort, high expression of AURKA mRNA was associated with poor HCC prognosis, and was obtained in Kaplan Meier Plotter database. The difference was statistically significant ( P<0.05); Cox multivariate regression analysis showed that TNM stage ( HR=1.69, 95% CI 1.37-2.10) and AURKA mRNA expression level ( HR=1.03, 95% CI 1.01-1.10) are the independent prognostic factors of HCC patients. Conclusions:AURKA is highly expressed in HCC, which is associated with the poor prognosis of HCC. AURKA is an independent prognostic factor of HCC.