Abstract:
Objective To investigate the expression of m6A methylatransferase ZC3H13 in tissues and peripheral blood of patients with gastric cancer and its application value in gastric cancer.
Methods UALCAN and GEPIA databases were used to analyze the expression difference of ZC3H13 in gastric cancer and adjacent normal tissues at transcription level; GEPIA and Kaplan-Meier Plotter databases were used to analyze the correlation between ZC3H13 expression level and OS of gastric cancer patients.ELISA was used to determine the concentration of ZC3H13 in 80 newly-diagnosed gastric cancer patients and 50 healthy controls, and to analyze its relation with clinicopathological data; IHC method was used to detect the expression level of ZC3H13 in 74 cases of cancer tissues and 40 cases of unpaired paracancerous tissues, and to analyze its relation with clinicopathological data.
Results The expression of ZC3H13 in gastric cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in adjacent gastric tissues (P < 0.05).The positive rate of ZC3H13 protein in gastric cancer tissues was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal tissues (74.3%vs.52.5%, P < 0.05).Serum ZC3H13 concentration in gastric cancer group was significantly higher than that in healthy control group (P < 0.05).The expression level of ZC3H13 in gastric cancer tissues and peripheral blood was related to gender, differentiation degree, clinical stage and infiltration depth of gastric cancer (P < 0.05).Multivariate analysis showed that ZC3H13 expression was not an independent risk factor for poor prognosis of gastric cancer patients (P > 0.05).The AUC was 0.826(P < 0.05), indicating good diagnostic value.The critical value of serum ZC3H13 protein concentration was 4.87 ng/ml, and the sensitivity and specificity of ZC3H13 in the diagnosis of gastric cancer were 98.8% and 50.0%.
Conclusion ZC3H13 is highly-expressed in gastric cancer tissues, and the concentration of ZC3H13 protein in peripheral blood is also significantly increased.ZC3H13 may play an important role in the occurrence and development of gastric cancer, and has certain clinical diagnostic value for gastric cancer.