Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients commonly experience poor overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) after curative surgical resection. Glypican-3 (GPC3) has been suggested as a prognostic biomarker for post-operative survival. However, few to none of these studies have included South Korean patients. This study aimed to determine GPC3 expression rate, clinical correlation, and post-operative prognostic value in South Korean HCC patients who underwent curative surgical resection. Surgically resected tissues from 185 HCC patients were collected and assembled into tissue microarrays (TMAs), which were stained for GPC3 by immunohistochemistry. GPC3 expression rates were correlated with clinicopathological information, and survival analyses were performed to assess the prognostic value of GPC3. GPC3 expression was present in 153 patients (82.7%). GPC3-positive patients were younger with higher frequencies of microvascular invasion and higher AFP levels than GPC3-negative patients. There was no significant difference in survival between GPC3-negative and GPC3-positive patients. Based on multivariate analysis, GPC3 expression was not a prognostic marker for post-operative survival. In South Korean HCC patients, GPC3 expression was more frequent in HCCs with aggressive features, but it was not an independent prognostic biomarker.
Keywords: biomarkers; glypican-3; hepatocellular carcinoma; immunohistochemistry; prognosis.
© 2016 APMIS. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.