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Overexpression of Pyruvate Kinase M2 in Tumor Tissues Is Associated with Poor Prognosis in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma

  • Original Article
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Pathology & Oncology Research

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumors, with a high degree of malignancy and a poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between expression of pyruvate kinase M2 (PKM2) and prognosis in patients with HCC. The expression levels of PKM2 and PKM1 in 86 cases of HCC were detected by immunohistochemistry. An H score was used to evaluate the expression of PKM, and all patients were further divided into PKM high-expression and PKM low-expression groups. The relationship between PKM2 expression and the clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of patients were subsequently analyzed. Our data suggested that the expression level of PKM2 was significantly higher in HCC tissues than in adjacent tissues and the negatively expression of PKM1 in HCC tissues. Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that PKM2 expression was strongly associated with survival in HCC patients (P = 0.001). The patients in the PKM2 high-expression group had significantly shorter survival times than the patients in the PKM2 low-expression group (hazard ratio for death, 2.358; 95% confidence interval [1.156, 4.812]; P = 0.018). In conclusion, these data indicate that PKM2 expression in HCC tissue samples can be used as a prognostic factor for patients with HCC and that high PKM2 expression is correlated with a poor prognosis in HCC patients.

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Funding

This study was supported by the Gansu Province Natural Science Youth fund (No. 1506RJYA225).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Rui Zhao, Jinbo Yang, Han Wang, Xiaodong Qin & Ning Zhu

  2. Department of Hepatology, Lanzhou University Second Hospital, Lanzhou, 730030, China

    Rui Zhao

  3. Department of Interventional Radiology, Lanzhou University First Hospital, Lanzhou, 730030, China

    Lei Li

  4. Xi’an Medical College Baoji Affiliated Hospital, Baoguang Branch, Baoji, 721006, China

    Qinfeng Niu

  5. Lanzhou Veterinary Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Lanzhou, 730046, China

    Xiaodong Qin

  6. School of Basic Medical Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Anchen Shi

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  1. Rui Zhao
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Correspondence to Jinbo Yang.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

Cairo University Ethical Committee. All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Declaration of Helsinki and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Human/Animal Rights Statement

This article contain all liver cancer tissues and corresponding normal adjacent samples were collected from 86 patients who had undergone routine surgery at the second hospital affiliated with Lanzhou University from January 2011 to December 2012.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Zhao, R., Li, L., Yang, J. et al. Overexpression of Pyruvate Kinase M2 in Tumor Tissues Is Associated with Poor Prognosis in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Pathol. Oncol. Res. 26, 853–860 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12253-019-00630-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12253-019-00630-3

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