Expression and clinical significance of CMTM6 in lung adenocarcinoma tissues / 中国肿瘤生物治疗杂志

ABSTRACT

@# Objective: To evaluate the expression of CKLF-like MARVEL transmembrane domain containing member 6 (CMTM6) in lung adenocarcinoma tissues, and to explore its correlation with the clinicopathologic features and prognosis of patients. Methods: Eighty-six pairs of cancer tissues and para-cancer tissues from patients that pathologically confirmed with lung adenocarcinoma were collected during September 2004 and June 2009 at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. The expression levels of CMTM6 in above mentioned tissues were detected by immunohistochemistry. Serum of 52 patients with confirmed lung adenocarcinoma was collected before and after surgery, and serum of 32 healthy subjects was also collected. The levels of CMTM6 and PD-L1 in peripheral blood before and after surgery were measured and analyzed by ELISA. Chi-square test was used to analyze the relationship between CMTM6 expression and clinicopathological features; Kaplan-Meier method and Log-Rank test were used to analyze the survival data of patients. Results: CMTM6 was widely expressed in lung adenocarcinoma tissues; 30% of the tumor tissues showed an up-regulation as compared with para-cancer tissues, and 70% showed no difference. CMTM6 expression was associated with clinical stage and distant metastasis (all P<0.05), but not significantly associated with age, gender, tumor size, and T stage (P>0.05). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed the survival rate of patients with high CMTM6 expression was significantly lower than those with stable expression (P=0.014), and among patients at stage Ⅲ, the survival rate of patients with high CMTM6 expression was significantly lower than those with stable CMTM6 expression (P=0.001). Cox regression model analysis of multiple factors showed CMTM6 expression was an independent risk factor for the prognosis of patients with lung adenocarcinoma. CMTM6 expression in pre-surgery serum, post-surgery serum and healthy donors’serum showed statistically significant differences (P<0.05), which was significantly correlated with tumor size and age of the patients. Spearman correlation analysis showed a significant correlation between serum CMTM6 and PD-L1 expression level (r=0.623, P<0.01). Conclusion: CMTM6 is an independent risk factor for the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma patients. It plays an important role in the occurrence and development of lung adenocarcinoma and it is a potential tumor suppressor gene.