The correlation between insulin-like growth factor II mRNA binding protein 3 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma and prognosis.

BACKGROUND/AIMS: The study aims to explore the expression of IMP3 in HCC and the correlation between its expression and prognosis. METHODOLOGY: We collected several clinical and pathological files including 92 cases of HCC and 58 cases of adjacent liver tissues. Expression of IMP3 in these tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry, while compared with clinicopathological characteristics and expression of Ki-67. A χ2 test was used to analyze the relationship between expression of IMP3 and clinicοpathologic factors. The Kaplan-Meier survival curve was used to calculate survival rate. A Cox analysis was used to evaluate the relationship between index and patients’ lifetime. RESULTS: The positive rate of IMP3 in HCC tissues was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissues. The expression of IMP3 was related to the histological differentiation of HCC, metastasis, the stage of ACJJ, the expression of Ki-67 and survival. The ACJJ stage, metastases and the expression of IMP3 were independent factors for the HCC patients’ survival. CONCLUSIONS: IMP3, which is associated with tumor formation, invasion, tumor cell proliferation and so on, may become the target for inhabiting cell proliferation and the biomarker for predicting prognosis.