Br J Cancer: LIMCH1 and HLA-DQB1 are potential markers of invasive cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer among women in the world, and it kills more than 311,000 patients every year.
Most cancer-related deaths are related to tumor metastasis or disease recurrence after primary treatment of the disease.

In cervical cancer, 90% of the disease recurrence occurs within 3 years of initial diagnosis , and less than 5% of patients survive for more than 5 years.
Due to the extremely poor prognosis of advanced cervical cancer, there are few treatment options.
Therefore, the identification of effective molecular markers is essential to improve the personalized treatment of patients.

The study aims to investigate the cervical cancer transcription data related to patient survival and recurrence to identify potential aggressive disease drivers.

The researchers compared the RNA sequencing data of the primary tumors of 20 relapsed patients and 53 cured patients, and used immunohistochemistry to determine the protein levels and prognostic effects of selected markers.

Identification of prognostic characteristics

The results showed that based on the patient's disease recurrence status, the researchers found 121 differentially expressed genes, from which 10 markers with high prognostic significance were identified and verified in an independent patient cohort.

After adjusting the established prognostic indicators, the researchers found that the protein levels of the two marker genes, HLA-DQB1 and LIMCH1, are independent predictors of patient survival (HLA-DQB1 has a hazard ratio of 2.
50 and LIMCH1 is 3.

The prognostic impact of 10 genetic markers

All in all, the results of this study revealed 10 genetic markers with high prognostic ability in cervical cancer.
Among them, HLA-DQB1 and LIMCH1 may become potential biomarkers for guiding the treatment of cervical cancer.

Original source:

Halle, MK, S?dal, M.
, Forsse, D.
et al.