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Original article
B3GNT3 overexpression is associated with unfavourable survival in non-small cell lung cancer
  1. Liuwei Gao1,
  2. Hua Zhang1,
  3. Bin Zhang1,
  4. Jinfang Zhu1,
  5. Chen Chen1,
  6. Weiran Liu2
  1. 1 Department of Lung Cancer, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin’s Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Tianjin Lung Cancer Center, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China
  2. 2 Department of Anesthesiology, National Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Key Laboratory of Cancer Prevention and Therapy, Tianjin’s Clinical Research Center for Cancer, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China
  1. Correspondence to Dr Weiran Liu, Department of Anesthesiology, Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital , Tianjin, China; wrliu{at}tmu.edu.cn

Abstract

Objective The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of beta-1,3-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase-3 (B3GNT3) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients and to investigate the relevance of B3GNT3 expression in tumour prognosis.

Methods In this study, B3GNT3 expression was examined in five pairs of resectable NSCLC tissue by Western blot and in 42 pairs of resectable NSCLC tissue by quantitative real-time PCR (qRT-PCR). Immunohistochemistry and statistical analysis were performed to assess the relationship between B3GNT3 expression scores and clinicopathological parameters, as well as clinical prognosis in a retrospective cohort of 176 NSCLC patients.

Results Both B3GNT3 mRNA and protein expression levels were significantly higher in NSCLC tissue than in adjacent normal tissue. In the 176 NSCLC cases, a high B3GNT3 expression level was positively correlated with lymph node metastasis (P<0.001) and advanced TNM stage (P=0.043). Kaplan-Meier analysis indicated that patients with high B3GNT3 expression had significantly lower disease-free survival (DFS) (P<0.001) and overall survival (OS) (P<0.001) than those with low B3GNT3 expression. Moreover, in the multivariate analyses, B3GNT3 expression was an independent prognostic factor for DFS (HR 0.329, 95% CI 0.213 to 0.508, P<0.001) and OS (HR 0.383, 95% CI 0.249 to 0.588, P<0.001).

Conclusions Our study demonstrated that high expression of B3GNT3 was associated with unfavourable DFS and OS in NSCLC patients, suggesting that B3GNT3 might be a potential prognostic biomarker for NSCLC.

  • lung vancer
  • histopathology
  • tumour markers

https://doi.org/10.1136/jclinpath-2017-204860

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    Footnotes

    • LG and HZ contributed equally.

    • Handling editor Dhirendra Govender.

    • Contributors LG conducted the study and wrote the manuscript. HZ, JZ and CC were responsible for designing the study and collecting the tumour samples. BZ and HZ analysed the data. WL was responsible for editing the manuscript and is guarantor.

    • Funding This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81472182) , the Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Commission (15JCQNJC11800) and the Tianjin Science and Technology Major Project (12ZCDZSY15400).

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent Obtained.

    • Ethics approval This study was approved by the ethics committees of Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and Hospital, Tianjin, China.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.