Study Of The Correlation Between FAT4 Expression And Prognosis In Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC), a common malignant in China, whose incidence and mortality were high. There are many treatments of HCC, but the effect was dissatisfied. The composite application of surgery (laparoscopic liver resection), radiotherapy, chemotherapy, radiofrequency ablationcan can cure patients with a early stage HCC, but for the patients with advanced HCC, the effect was disappointed. What’s more,once a patient was diagnosed with a HCC, it’s usually late. So seeking a more effective treatment of HCC is urgently needed.Curing disease is treating the causes of disease, the cause of HCC were gene mutations, so treating HCC is treating gene mutations. Gene therapy means that we control the gene expression then we cure disease.FAT4 gene has been extensively studied as a tumor suppressor gene in recent years. The molecular mechanism of FAT4 as a tumor suppressor genes is not clear, but it has been reported that the low expression of FAT4 indicate a poor prognosis in stomach cancer, lung cancer, wilms tumor, pancreatic cancer, melanoma, breast cancer and so on. And whether FAT4 have expression in HCC, whether correlated with the prognosis is still unclear. So make it clear whether no FAT4 expression indicate a high risk and a poor prognosis in HCC is significant, and FAT4 may provide a new target for HCC gene therapy.In this study, we collect HCC patients who under surgery from 2006 to 2010 in our hospital (pathology has been confirmed and with detailed follow-up data) with surgically resected HCC specimens provided by ourhospital pathology. Evaluating the expression of FAT4 by immunohistochemistry, then sort out the patient’s clinical data, tumor recurrence, analysis FAT4 expression and correlation between FAT4 expression and prognosis in HCC, Then we examine methylation levels of FAT4 with 33 cases in HCC tissues and their paracancer by methylation-specific PCR (MSP). At last we get a conclusion:FAT4 as a tumor suppressor gene expression differences in HCC, and is associated with prognosis, those FAT4 expression of HCC patients than those without the expression seem to have a relatively better survival, and the loss of FAT4 may due to the methylation, However, the expression of FAT4 may not be an independent factor in HCC.