High expression of myofibrillogenesis regulator-1 predicts poor prognosis for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma after curative hepatectomy.

Myofibrillogenesis regulator (MR-1) is overexpressed in human cancer cells and plays an essential role in cancer cell growth. However, its role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not yet been explored. The aim of this study was to investigate the association of MR-1 expression with clinicopathologic features and prognosis in patients with HCC. Quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to detect MR-1 mRNA levels in tissues samples from 120 HCC patients. Results showed that MR-1 expression was significantly higher in HCC tissues when compared with matched adjacent normal tissues (P=0.004). In HCC cancerous tissues, it was also significantly associated with tumor size (P=0.024) and serum AFP level (P=0.003). Moreover, Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that HCC patients with high MR-1 expression had shorter overall survival time than those with low MR-1 expression (P=0.009). When analyzed with a multivariate Cox regression model, MR-1 was identified as an independent prognostic factor for overall survival. Furthermore, when combined with serum AFP level, the median survival time significantly differed between patients with baseline high serum AFP and high MR-1 expression levels and those with normal AFP and low MR-1 levels (P=0.007). Taken together, our results suggest that high expression of MR-1 is involved in HCC progression and could be a novel biomarker of poor prognosis in patients with HCC.