Research On Expression And Clinical Significance Of GCNT3 In Pancreatic Cancer

Background:The Pancreatic Cancer(PC)is a highly malignant neoplasm with a poor prognosis and a 7% five-year survival rate.The poor outcome of PC is partially due to its chemoresistence,in which the aberrant mucin expression plays a pivotal role.The beta 1,6 N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase(GCNT3/ C2GNT)is a core enzyme catalyzing the biosynthesis of mucins.In this research,we evaluated clinicopathological features of PC patients and expression of GCNT3 to explore the role of GCNT3 in PC.Methods:79 pancreatic cancer patients treated in the department of hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery,First Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University were included in this research.The Immunohistochemical(IHC)staining of GCNT3 in 79 PC tissue samples were performed and correlation between expression of GCNT3 and clinicopathological features of PC patients were analyzed.Results:The IHC results showed that GCNT3 was significantly over-expressed in tumor comparing with their matched non-tumor tissues.Further statistical analyses showed that positive GCNT3 expression was significantly correlated with poorer clinical features including poorer tumor differentiation,distant metastasis,worse pathological stage,vascular invasion and neural invasion.Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that both overall survival(OS)and relapse-free survival(RFS)of the GCNT3-positive patients were significantly worse than GCNT3-negative patients.The logistic regression analysis indicated that positive GCNT3 expression was an independent risk factor for OS.Conclusions:All results showed that over-expression of GCNT3 was associated with poor clinical features and prognosis of PC,making GCNT3 a potential prognostic biomarker for PC.