Pan-cancer analysis from multi-omics data reveals AAMP as an unfavourable prognostic marker.

OBJECTIVES: Angio-associated migratory cell protein (AAMP) is a protein that participates in cell migration and is reported to be involved in cancer progression. However, the molecular mechanism of AAMP in pan-cancer is not known. METHODS: We used multi-omics data, such as TIMER, TCGA, GTEx, CPTAC, HPA, and cBioPortal to analyze AAMP expression, and gene alteration in pan-cancer. Univariate Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier were utilized to explore prognostic significance of AAMP expression level. We applied Spearman analysis to investigate the correlation between AAMP and TMB, MSI, immune cell infiltration, immune checkpoints. Moreover, we mainly studied liver hepatocellular carcinoma(LIHC) to explore AAMP expression, clinical significance, and prognosis. Cox regression analysis was used to study independent factor to predict prognosis for AAMP in LIHC. GSEA was utilized to investigate the biological function for AAMP in LIHC. RESULTS: AAMP was overexpressed in most cancers, and high AAMP expression was associated with worse overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and progress-free interval (PFI) for LIHC and adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC). Moreover, AAMP had the highest mutation frequency in uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC). AAMP was correlated with TMB and MSI in esophageal carcinoma (ESCA), stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD), lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC), and thyroid carcinoma (THCA). Then, we focus on LIHC to investigate the expression and prognosis of AAMP. AAMP overexpression was related to histological grade and pathological stage in LIHC. Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that AAMP overexpression was an independent adverse prognostic marker for LIHC. AAMP expression was correlated with immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoints in LIHC. Function enrichment analysis indicated the participation of AAMP in the cell cycle and DNA replication. CONCLUSIONS: AAMP was a latent prognostic indicator for pan-cancer and had high potential as a biomarker for the diagnosis and prognosis of LIHC.

Cytokine Profiles and Virological Marker Monitoring during 48 Weeks Peginterferon Alfa Treatment for HBeAg-Positive Chronic Hepatitis B.

Objective: This study aimed to investigate whether cytokine profiles and virological markers might add value in monitoring the effects of peginterferon (PEG-IFN) therapy for hepatitis B e-antigen (HBeAg) positive chronic hepatitis B (CHB). Methods: HBeAg positive patients with CHB were treated with PEG-IFN for 48 weeks. Clinical biochemical, and HBV serological indexes, as well as cytokines, were detected at baseline and every 12 weeks. Results: A total of 116 patients with CHB were enrolled in this study; 100 patients completed the 48-week treatment and follow-up, of whom 38 achieved serum HBeAg disappearance, 25 achieved HBeAg seroconversion, 37 showed HBsAg decreases ≥ 1 log 10 IU/mL, 9 showed HBsAg disappearance, and 8 became HBsAb positive. The cytokine levels at baseline and during treatment were similar between the HBeAg disappearance group and non-disappearance group. The disappearance of HBeAg was independently associated with HBeAg levels at weeks 12 and 24, and with the HBeAg decline at week 24 ( P < 0.05). The HBsAg response was independently associated with HBsAg, the HBsAg decline, HBeAg, the HBeAg decline at week 12, and HBsAg at week 24 ( P< 0.05). Conclusion: There was no significant correlation between the response to interferon (IFN) and cytokines during PEG-IFN treatment. The changes in virological markers predicted the response to IFN after 48 weeks.

Prognostic value of CYP2W1 expression in patients with human hepatocellular carcinoma.

CYP2W1 overexpression has been reported in a variety of human cancers. However, the role of CYP2W1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. This study was designed to evaluate the expression and prognostic significance of CYP2W1 in human HCC. Real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was conducted to detect CYP2W1 messenger RNA (mRNA) expression in 41 pairs of fresh-frozen HCC tissues and adjacent noncancerous tissues. In addition, CYP2W1 expression was analyzed by immunohistochemistry in 133 clinicopathologically characterized HCC cases. The relationship between CYP2W1 expression and clinicopathological features was analyzed by appropriate statistics. Kaplan-Meier analysis and Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to investigate the correlation between CYP2W1 expression and prognosis of HCC patients. The relative mRNA expression of CYP2W1 was significantly higher in HCC tissues than in adjacent noncancerous tissues (P < 0.001). In addition, CYP2W1 expression was significantly correlated with tumor size (P = 0.023), histological differentiation (P = 0.04), and tumor stage (P = 0.014). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves indicated that patients with high expression of CYP2W1 had shorter overall survival than those with low expression (P < 0.001). Furthermore, Cox regression analyses showed that CYP2W1 expression was an independent predictor of overall survival. Our data suggest that CYP2W1 could play an important role in HCC and might serve as a valuable prognostic marker and potential target for gene therapy in the treatment of HCC.