Lysyl Oxidase Is Highly Expressed And A Promising Predictor Of Unfavorable Outcome In Hepatocellula Carcinoma

Objective LOX is frequently overexpressed in variety of malignancies and involves in tumor invasion and migration. In this study, the expression level of LOX in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and corresponding adjacent noncancerous tissue (ANT) were investigated. Moreover, the correlations between LOX and clinical features or prognosis were also measured.Methods Fresh tissue and the ones embedded in paraffin from 78 patients were recruited in this study. HCC cell lines, including MHCC-97-H, SK-hep-1, SSMC-7721 and Hep-G2, and human normal liver cell line (HL7702) were used in this study. QRT-PCR are used to evaluate levels of LOX mRNA in tissue and each cell line. Western blotting and immunohistochemical analysis were performed to measure the protein level of LOX in cell lines or tissue, respectively. The survival data were also analyzed to investigate the association between LOX and clinical features or prognosis.Results qRT-PCR revealed that expression levels of LOX in HCC cell lines were all much higher than that in normal liver cell line HL7702 (F=454.18, P=0.000< 0.001). The data of western blotting showed a similar result (F=129.551, P=0.000<0.001). Compared with ANT, levels of LOX mRNA in HCC tissue were remarkably higher (Z=-3.25, P=0.001<0.05).47.4%(37/78) of the HCC tissue have an over 2-fold increasement compared with matched controls. COX multivariate models showed that tumor number (HR,0.535; 95% CI,0.314-0.913; P=0.022), tumor size (HR,2.939; 95% CI,1.405-6.146; P=0.004) and LOX (HR,1.726; 95% CI,1.032-2.888; P=0.038) were independent predictors of poor prognosis.Conclusion LOX has an involvement in tumor progression of HCC, which seems a potential predictor of patients with HCC.