Association between the overexpression of PBOV1 and the prognosis of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

Prostate and breast cancer overexpressed 1 (PBOV1) is a known human protein-coding gene with an uncharacterized function; it has been demonstrated to be overexpressed in a variety of human cancer types. The overexpression of PBOV1 has been indicated as significantly associated with the poor prognosis of these types of cancer. However, the function of PBOV1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has not yet been elucidated. The present study was designed to evaluate the expression and prognostic significance of PBOV1 in HCC. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction and western blot analyses were conducted to measure the expression of PBOV1 in HCC cell lines and tissues. The associations between PBOV1 expression and clinicopathological features were statistically analyzed. The association between PBOV1 expression and the prognosis of HCC patients was analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method. The mRNA and protein expression levels of PBOV1 were significantly increased in the HCC cell lines and HCC tissues (all P<0.05) compared with normal cell lines and tissues. In addition, PBOV1 expression was significantly associated with maximal tumor size (P=0.032), tumor metastasis (P=0.035) and tumor stage (P=0.017). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves indicated that overall survival was significantly poorer in patients with HCC with PBOV1 overexpression (P<0.05) compared with patients with low expression levels. The multivariate analysis indicated that high PBOV1 expression was an independent predictor of poor overall survival. To the best of our knowledge, the data of the present study describes the expression pattern of PBOV1 in HCC for the first time, and also suggests that PBOV1 may serve as a valuable prognostic biomarker for HCC.