Expression tendency and prognostic value of TCF21 in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background: Transcription factor 21 (TCF21) is identified as a tumor suppressor in a variety of human tumors. The purpose of the study was to examine its expression tendency and prognostic value in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).
Methods: Relative expression of TCF21 mRNA in tissue samples from HCC patients and healthy volunteers were detected through quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) while its protein level was examined via immunohistochemistry analysis. Chi-square test was adopted to assess the association of TCF21 expression with the clinicopathological characteristic of the patients. Then Kaplan-Meier analysis was employed to analyze the function of TCF21 expression on overall survival among HCC patients.
Results: Both the mRNA and protein levels of TCF21 were significantly reduced in HCC tissue samples compared with healthy controls (p < .05). Also, its expression was obviously affected by the classification of tissue pathology, metastasis, T stage, N stage and pathological grading. According to Kaplan-Meier analysis, patients with higher expression of TCF21 experienced dramatically longer overall survival time than those with lower expression (log rank test, p < .001).
Conclusions: TCF21 expression was decreased in HCC patients and it could act as a prognostic marker.