Purpose: This study aimed to investigate the clinical significance of MAP4 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), particularly its association with metastasis-related early recurrence after curative hepatic resection. Patients and Methods: We enrolled 172 patients with hepatitis B virus-associated HCC (HBV-HCC) who underwent curative resection in our cohort. After excluding potential confounders such as vascular invasion and portal vein thrombosis, 101 patients were selected for MAP4 gene expression analysis by qRT-PCR. Kaplan-Meier and Cox regression analyses were conducted to evaluate its association with early recurrence and prognostic factors. Our findings were further validated in an independent cohort. Results: MAP4 expression was upregulated in HCC cell lines and tumor tissues, compared to their corresponding non-tumorous controls. The clinical analysis showed that high MAP4 overexpression in liver tumor tissues was positively correlated with early ( p = 0.042) rather than late recurrence ( p = 0.221) in our cohort. Moreover, it was linked to shorter recurrence-free survival ( p = 0.023) and reduced overall survival ( p = 0.015). The expression level of serum alpha-fetoprotein ( p = 0.001), tumor size ( p = 0.012), tumor number ( p = 0.018), satellite tumor ( p = 0.001), and MAP4 expression ( p = 0.042) were correlated with HCC early recurrence by univariate analysis. Consistent clinical findings were observed in the validation cohort. Conclusion: This study demonstrated that MAP4 overexpression in liver tumor tissue was positively correlated with early recurrence in HBV-HCC patients following curative hepatic resection, providing insights into its clinical significance and potential involvement in underlying molecular mechanisms, particularly in metastasis-related early recurrence. Keywords: curative hepatic resection, early recurrence, hepatitis B virus-associated hepatocellular carcinoma, HBV-HCC, metastasis, microtubule-associated protein 4, MAP4
Su et al. (Sun,) studied this question.