Evaluation of Astrocyte Elevated Gene-1 Expression in Iranian Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

Astrocyte elevated gene-1 (AEG-1) is over expressed in several cancers and plays an important role in cancer progression. However, its functional significance remains unknown in human Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) of Iranian context. In this research study, we evaluated the expression of AEG-1 in HCC surgical specimens at transcriptional levels by quantitative Real-Time RT-PCR. All PCR reactions were performed in triplicate for both target gene and internal control (GAPDH) with the 2-ΔΔCt method. Differences in target gene expression levels in patients and controls were evaluated with t-test, in which p≤0.05 was considered to be significant. The results demonstrated a significant increase in the AEG-1 mRNA expression level in HCC tumor tissues compared with control group (p<0.05). There was no significant difference between AEG-1 gene expression in male and female patients. The results showed that there was no significant difference between AEG-1 gene expressions in subjects with different ages in the patient group. The following results were obtained about AEG-1 gene expression in different stage in the patients: There was no significant difference between stage II and III however was significantly different between stage II and IV. There was a significant AEG-1 gene expression difference between stage III and IV. Thus, high expression might be associated with the susceptibility to HCC in Iranian population and it could be a useful biomarker for the prediction of HCC progression and prognosis. Further studies need to be conducted in larger sample sizes and other populations to validate these findings

Keywords:

Hepatocellular carcinoma , AEG-1 , Reverse transcriptase real-time polymerase chain reaction