| Backgroud: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common cancers in China and worldwide. Its high potential of invasion and metastasis leads to a high recurrence/ metastasis postoperatively and a very poor prognosis. HCC is therefore the second- leading cause of cancer death among males in China and a large threaten to the health of our people. So the study on mechanism of HCC recurrence/metastasis and the search for bio-markers reflecting recurrence/metastasis and prognosis of HCC patients is valuable in treatment and prognostic counseling. Documents have shown that the invasion and metastasis of malignancies is the key factor related to the poor prognosis of patients with cancer. Recently several studies found that EGFL7 is proven to obviously reinforce the ability of cell motility and is shown to be highly expressed both in the tumor tissue and in tumor cell lines, which implied that Egfl7 may be associated with recurrence/metastasis and prognosis of HCC. It has not been clear whether or not EGFL7 is engaged in the process of HCC recurrence/metastasis. Objective: To study on the expression of EGFL7 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and the relationship between the expression levels and the clinicopathological parameters of HCC, and to analyze the possible molecular biologic mechanism of the HCC recurrence/ metastasis. We also estimated the value of EGFL7 in the HCC prognosis counseling, aiming at providing a novel bio-marker for HCC diagnosis and a new target for HCC treatment.Methods: Thirty-one HCC and their corresponding para-cancer liver tissues (PCLT) were obtained from Thirty-one HCC paients underwent hepatectomy between November, 2005 and September, 2006 in the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. Five normal liver tissues were also obtained. Western blotting was performed for quantitative analysis of the expression of EGFL7 in HCC, and the correlation between its expression levels and clinical pathological characterisitics. One hundred and two paraffin specimens of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) were also obtained from One hundred and two HCC paients underwent hepatectomy between October, 2000 and July, 2004 in the Xiangya Hospital of Central South University. Immunohistochemistry was performed for determine the expression of EGFL7 protein and its localization in the HCC tissues. To explore the correlation between EGFL7 expression levels and the prognosis of HCC patients, follow-up study was applied on the one hundred and two patients involved in this research. Results: Western blotting analysis result indicates that the expression level of EGFL7 protein were higher on HCC tissues than that on PCLT (4.02±0.98 vs. 1.72±0.47, P < 0.05 ) and the expression level on PCLT also higher than that on normal (1.72±0.47 vs. 0.11±0.05, P < 0.05 ), both with significant difference. Our data also indicated that there is a highly significant correlation of the total EGFL7 protein expression levels with number of tumor nodes and tumor vein invasion (p<0.05 ) .The result of Immunohistechermical analysis indicate EGFL7 protein mainly locates in the endochylema of tumor cells. In these one hundred and two paraffin specimens, there is a highly significant correlation of EGFL7 protein expression levels with number of tumor nodes and tumor vein invasion (p<0.05) . According to the EGFL7 protein expression levels, we divided one hundred and two HCC paraffin specimens into two subgroups, including 55 cases of high EGFL7 expression group and 47 cases of low EGFL7 expression group. And the low EGFL7 expression group had a longer survival time (796 days vs. 480 days, P< 0.05) and also a longer disease-free survival time than high EGFL7 expression group (512 days vs. 180 days, P< 0.05).Conclusion: We firstly demonstrated the high expression of EGFL7 in HCC tissues and the EGFL7 expression levels positively correlate with the number of tumor nodes and vein invasion significantly. The high expression of EGFL7 protein significantly correlates with the recurrence/ metastasis of HCC and the poor prognosis of HCC patients. Our results indicate that EGFL7 can be of great value in predicting the recurrence/ metastasis and poor prognosis of HCC patients and may be a potential target for HCC.
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