Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2018 Feb 13:9:211.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2018.00211. eCollection 2018.

Elevated HERV-K Expression in Soft Tissue Sarcoma Is Associated with Worsened Relapse-Free Survival

Maria Giebler  1 , Martin S Staege  2 , Sindy Blauschmidt  1 , Lea I Ohm  2 , Matthias Kraus  1 , Peter Würl  3 , Helge Taubert  4 , Thomas Greither  1
Affiliations

Elevated HERV-K Expression in Soft Tissue Sarcoma Is Associated with Worsened Relapse-Free Survival

Maria Giebler et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

A wide variety of endogenous retroviral sequences has been demonstrated in the human genome so far, divided into several different families according to the sequence homology to viral strains. While increased expression of human endogenous retrovirus (HERV) elements has already been linked to unfavorable prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma, breast cancer, and ovarian carcinoma yet less is known about the impact of the expression of different HERV elements on sarcomagenesis in general as well as the outcome of soft tissue sarcoma (STS) patients. Therefore, in this study the association between expression of HERV-K and HERV-F and the clinicopathological characteristics in a cohort of STSs as well as the patients' prognosis was evaluated. HERV-K and HERV-F expression was assessed by quantitative real-time PCR in 120 patient specimens. HERV-K and HERV-F expression was significantly correlated (rS = 0.5; p = 6.4 × 10-9; Spearman's rank bivariate correlation). Also, tumor diameter exhibited a significant negative association to HERV-K and HERV-F expression. Levels of several hypoxia-related RNAs like HIF-1α and miR-210 showed a significant positive correlation with both HERV-K and HERV-F expression. Although in survival analyses no impact of HERV expression on disease-specific survival could be detected, patients with elevated HERV-K expression had a significantly shorter relapse-free survival (p = 0.014, log-rank analysis). In conclusion, we provide evidence for the first time that the increased expression of HERV-K in tumors is associated with STS patients' prognosis.

Keywords: HERV-Fb; HERV-K; prognosis; relapse; soft tissue sarcoma.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
K vs. F blot (A) and violin blot (B) exhibiting the distribution of HERV-K and HERV-F mRNA expression in 120 analyzed soft tissue sarcoma (STS) specimens. Violin plot was generated with BoxPlotR (http://shiny. chemgrid.org/boxplotr/).
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Survival analyses of STS patients with low or elevated intratumoral HERV-K (A) or HERV-F (B) expression. Kaplan–Meier survival blots for the relapse-free survival.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Bannert N., Kurth R. (2004). Retroelements and the human genome: new perspectives on an old relation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 101(Suppl. 2) 14572–14579. 10.1073/pnas.0404838101 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Bao Y., Konesky K., Park Y.-J., Rosu S., Dyer P. N., Rangasamy D., et al. (2004). Nucleosomes containing the histone variant H2A.Bbd organize only 118 base pairs of DNA. EMBO J. 23 3314–3324. 10.1038/sj.emboj.7600316 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Brodsky I., Foley B., Gillespie D. (1993). Expression of human endogenous retrovirus (HERV-K) in chronic myeloid leukemia. Leuk. Lymphoma 11(Suppl. 1) 119–123. 10.3109/10428199309047874 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Broecker F., Horton R., Heinrich J., Franz A., Schweiger M.-R., Lehrach H., et al. (2016). The intron-enriched HERV-K(HML-10) family suppresses apoptosis, an indicator of malignant transformation. Mob. DNA 7:25. 10.1186/s13100-016-0081-9 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Casali P. G., Blay J.-Y. (2010). Soft tissue sarcomas: ESMO clinical practice guidelines for diagnosis, treatment and follow-up. Ann. Oncol. 21(Suppl. 5) v198–v203. 10.1093/annonc/mdq209 - DOI - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources