[Expression and clinical significance of soluble B7-H3 in sera of patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma].

Objective: To detect the expression and clinical significance of co-stimulatory molecule B7-H3 in sera and tissues of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Methods: We collected 63 samples of sera and liver tissue from HCC patients, 5 adjacent normal tissues of hepatic hemangioma as controls, and the other 50 sera samples of healthy people in the same time. The expression of soluble B7-H3 (sB7-H3) in sera from HCC patients and healthy people was detected by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry was performed to analyze the expression of B7-H3 on normal liver and HCC tissues.
Results: The level of sB7-H3 from HCC patients was significantly higher than that from healthy people [(4143.47±976.27) pg/mL vs (2076.18±605.42) pg/mL, P<0.05]; and sB7-H3 level was related to clinical stage, distant metastasis and the positive expression of B7-H3 in HCC tissues (P<0.05), while there was no significant difference between its expression and the other clinical pathological parameters, such as the patients' age, gender, histological type, lymphatic metastasis and size of tumor. Furthermore, a positive correlation was found between the level of sB7-H3 and CA19-9 in HCC patients (P<0.05), but it was not associated with AFP and CEA.
Conclusion: The level of sB7-H3 in HCC patients was significantly higher than that in healthy people, and B7-H3 expression was correlated with clinical pathological indexes, which implicated that detecting the expression of sB7- H3 might be helpful for the diagnosis of primary HCC.