Artikel
Nuclear LEF1/TCF4 correlate with poor prognosis in cerebral metastasis of lung adenocarcinomas
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Veröffentlicht: | 21. Mai 2013 |
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Gliederung
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Objective: The transcription factors of the WNT-signaling pathway LEF1/TCF4 has been described in cerebral metastases of lung adenocarcinomas in mouse models. Their role in humans is unclear.
Method: We analyzed the WNT-signaling components LEF1, TCF4 and β-Catenin in 25 adenocarcinoma brain metastases using immunohistochemistry (IHC). In addition, we generated an AXIN2 and a LEF1/TCF4 gene signature, the latter as representative of WNT/β-Catenin activity, following a bioinformatics approach with a gene expression dataset of cerebral metastases in lung adenocarcinoma.
Results: Nuclear TCF4 was positive in all adenocarcinoma samples, whereas only 36% depicted nuclear LEF1 and nuclear β-Catenin signals. Samples with nuclear LEF1 as well as high TCF4 (++++) expression were associated with a shorter survival (p=0.01, HR=6.68), while nuclear β-Catenin had no significant impact on prognosis and did not significantly correlate with nuclear LEF1. It is Interesting that a high proliferation index Ki67 was also associated with shorter survival in this late-stage disease (p=0.03, HR 3.27).
To analyze the prognostic relevance in primary lung adenocarcinomas, we applied the AXIN2 and the LEF1/TCF4 gene signatures to a microarray dataset of 58 primary lung adenocarcinomas. Only the LEF1/TCF4 signature was able to separate clusters with impact on survival (p=0.01, HR=0.32). These clusters displayed diverging enrichment patterns of the cell cycle pathway.
Conclusions: In conclusion, our data show that LEF1/TCF4, but not β-Catenin, have prognostic relevance in cases of primary human lung adenocarcinomas and those with cerebral metastases. In contrast to the previous in vivo findings, these results indicate that LEF1/TCF4 act independently of β-Catenin in this setting.