Serum Golgi protein 73 is not a suitable diagnostic marker for hepatocellular carcinoma

// Tianhui Liu 1, 2, * , Mingjie Yao 1, * , Shuhong Liu 3 , Lu Wang 1 , Leijie Wang 1 , Jinlin Hou 4 , Xiong Ma 5 , Jidong Jia 2 , Jingmin Zhao 3 , Hui Zhuang 1 , Fengmin Lu 1 1 Department of Microbiology & Infectious Disease Center, School of Basic Medicine, Peking University Health Science Center, Beijing 100191, P.R. China 2 Liver Research Center, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Capital Medical University, Beijing Key Laboratory of Translational Medicine in Liver Cirrhosis & National Clinical Research Center of Digestive Diseases, Beijing 100050, P.R. China 3 Department of Pathology and Hepatology, Beijing 302 Hospital, Beijing 100039, P.R. China 4 State Key Laboratory of Organ Failure Research, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Viral Hepatitis Research, Department of Infectious Diseases, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangdong Province 510515, P.R. China 5 State Key Laboratory for Oncogenes and Related Genes, Key Laboratory of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Ministry of Health, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Renji Hospital, School of Medicine, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai Cancer Institute, Shanghai Institute of Digestive Disease, Shanghai 200001, P.R. China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Fengmin Lu, email: lu.fengmin@bjmu.edu.cn Jingmin Zhao, email: jmzhao302@163.com Jidong Jia, email: jia_jd@ccmu.edu.cn Keywords: Golgi protein 73, hepatocellular carcinoma, diagnostic marker, cirrhosis Received: December 06, 2016      Accepted: January 11, 2017      Published: February 01, 2017 ABSTRACT Golgi protein 73 (GP73) has been suggested as a serum marker for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, this has been challenged in recent years. In the present study, we found that the serum GP73 increased in HCC patients with cirrhosis but not in those without cirrhosis. The receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) analysis demonstrated that serum GP73 had poor performance for differentiating HCC patients from cirrhosis patients. In addition, the immunohistochemistry revealed that aberrant expression of GP73 was primarily observed in cirrhotic and tumor liver tissues from both cirrhosis and HCC patients, but rarely in non-cirrhotic liver tissues from HCC patients without cirrhosis. Moreover, serum Alpha-fetoprotein in HCC patients with cirrhosis decreased sharply after resection of tumor tissue, while the serum GP73 remained stable. These data indicated that the background of cirrhosis was related to the elevation of serum GP73 in HCC patients. In conclusion, serum GP73 is not a suitable diagnostic marker for HCC.