Expression And Clinical Significance Of PCNP And β-catenin In Salivary Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma

Background Salivary adenoid cystic carcinoma（SACC）is a common salivary gland malignant tumor in the oral and maxillofacial region.This tumor has the characteristic of slow growth,but the early stage is prone to nerve invasion causing symptoms of nerve involvement and distant jumping metastasis,which will lead to poor prognosis.The common treatment of SACC is usually adjuvant radiotherapy after surgical resection,but up to now,the metastasis and recurrence of SACC caused by the characteristics of nerve invasion is still an urgent problem to be solved.PCNP（PEST Containing Nuclear Protein）is the first PEST-containing nuclear protein identified in the nucleus by database mining.The PEST sequence contained in the protein can regulate proliferation and is related to the process of cell cycle.As a protein ligase,not only related to chromosomal stability and immune system diseases,but also in many types of malignant tumors,such as thyroid cancer,ovarian cancer,lung cancer and pancreatic cancer,etc.Meanwhile,a positive correlation between PCNP and β-catenin was found in the GEPIA database,and β-catenin,as a key protein in the Wnt pathway,was also reported in SACC.Unfortunately,no study has yet shown a correlation between PCNP,β-catenin expression and SACC.Meanwhile,most of the tumor markers associated with SACC as an aid to diagnosis are based on molecular biology studies,while biomechanical processes have also been reported to be correlated with tumor tissue interface and phenotype in recent years.Therefore,this study was proposed to investigate the expression of PCNP,β-catenin in SACC tissues,its clinical association and their correlation in terms of mechanical properties.On this basis,further exploration of the relationship between PCNP、β-catenin expression in SACC tissues and clinicopathological features and the association of Average Roughness changes in SACC tissues may provide new ideas for clinical diagnosis and treatment of SACC.Objective The expression of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC was analyzed to see if there was a significant difference compared with adjacent tissues;The expression of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC has relevant clinical significance and relevance;The micro and nano morphology of SACC tissue samples with or without invasive nerves was observed by AFM to evaluate the relationship between PCNP、β-catenin expression and tissue Average Roughness of SACC tissue.Methods From January 2013 to December 2020,30 cancer tissues of SACC patients who underwent surgical resection in the First Hospital of Lanzhou University were collected as the research object,HE staining was used to screen 10 adjacent tissues（> 2cm）as the control.The immunohistochemical SP method was used to detect the expression of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC and adjacent tissues.SPSS software was used to analyze the relationship between the expressions of PCNP and β-catenin and the clinical pathological characteristics of SACC as well as the correlation between the expressions of PCNP and β-catenin.Further,the micro and nano morphology of SACC tissue samples with or without nerve invasion and paracancerous tissues were observed by atomic mechanics microscope（AFM）,and the correlation between PCNP、β-catenin expression and Average Roughness of SACC tissue was evaluated.Results PCNP was abundantly expressed in the nucleus of SACC tissues,and β-catenin was mainly expressed in cytoplasm and some nucleus of SACC tumor cells.The positive expression rates of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC tissues were83.3%（25/30）and66.7%（20/30）,which were significantly higher than adjacent paracancerous tissues（0/10）,the difference was statistically significant（P<0.01）.The expression of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC was related to nerve invasion（P<0.05）.There was a significant positive correlation between PCNP and β-catenin expression in SACC（r=0.713,P<0.05）.AFM showed that the surface morphology and roughness of SACC tissue samples were significantly different at the nano level.The interface roughness of SACC tissue with nerve invasion was lower than that of SACC without nerve invasion and lower than that of adjacent tissues.The relationship between the change of Average Roughness value of SACC tissue and the expression of PCNP andβ-catenin in SACC was negatively correlated.Conclusion The positive expression of PCNP and β-catenin in SACC was significantly increased and positively correlated,and its expression level was significantly different from whether nerve invasion or not.It explains the prompt for joint detection of PCNP and β catenin can be used as a tumor marker to predict whether SACC has the biological characteristics of nerve invasion.In SACC with nerve invasion or not,the change of tissue Average Roughness was also negatively correlated with the expression of PCNP and β-catenin.Therefore,it is speculated that the expression of PCNP and β-catenin can regulate the Average Roughness of SACC and participate in the invasion process of SACC,which provides a new perspective for the diagnosis and treatment of SACC.