Decreased expression of COLEC10 predicts poor overall survival in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Purpose: Collectin subfamily member 10 (COLEC10) encodes for collectin liver 1 (CL-L1), which is highly expressed in normal liver. Nevertheless, the association between COLEC10 and the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. To address this question, the prognostic value of COLEC10 expression in HCC was explored in this study.

Patients and methods: Data from The Cancer Genome Atlas were used to compared transcriptional levels of COLEC10 in HCC samples and samples from healthy controls. In addition, COLEC10 mRNA and protein expression levels were analyzed in HCC tissue samples from Chinese patients and matched adjacent nontumorous tissue samples, by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry, respectively. The prognostic value of COLEC10 was further examined using the Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis online tool.

Results: Both the mRNA and protein levels of COLEC10 were found to be downregulated in HCC tissues compared with normal controls. Survival analysis indicated that decreased mRNA and protein levels of COLEC10 were related with shorter overall survival in patients with HCC. In addition, univariate and multivariate analysis demonstrated that COLEC10 is an independent prognostic factor for overall survival of HCC patients.

Conclusion: Together, the results suggest that decreased expression of COLEC10 may predict poor overall survival in patients with HCC.

Keywords: CL-L1; collectins; liver neoplasms; survival analysis.

Figure 1

COLEC10 was downregulated in patients with HCC. Notes: (A) Comparison of COLEC10 expression in 369 HCC tissue samples with that of 160 normal living tissues using the GEPIA database. ^*P<0.05. (B) Dot plots of COLEC10 mRNA expression in HCC and matched adjacent nontumor specimens from 84 cases. β-actin was used as an endogenous control. P<0.0001, paired t-test. (C) CL-L1 protein expression in 9 HCC cell lines and 1 immortalized liver cell line (LO2). β-actin was used as an endogenous control. (D) Representative images of CL-L1 IHC staining in HCC and normal liver tissues. Abbreviations: COLEC10, collectin subfamily member 10; GEPIA, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis; HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma; IHC, immunonhistochemistry.

Figure 2

(A) Kaplan–Meier analysis of the relationship between overall survival and CL-L1 expression, (B) the prognostic effect of the COLEC10 mRNA level in HCC from GEPIA database. Notes: n(high): Samples with expression level higher than the median of TPM (transcripts of per million) are considered as the high-expression cohort. n(low): Samples with expression level lower than the median of TPM are considered the low-expression cohort. Abbreviations: COLEC10, collectin subfamily member 10; GEPIA, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis; HCC, hepatocellular carcinoma; HR, hazard ratio; TPM, transcripts per million.