Low Expression of Keratin17 is Related to Poor Prognosis in Bladder Cancer

Jiacheng Wu; Haifei Xu; Hao Ji; Baoqian Zhai; Jinfeng Zhu; Mingde Gao; Haixia Zhu; Xiaolin Wang

doi:10.2147/OTT.S287891

Low Expression of Keratin17 is Related to Poor Prognosis in Bladder Cancer

Onco Targets Ther. 2021 Jan 19:14:577-587. doi: 10.2147/OTT.S287891. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Jiacheng Wu^#^{1

2}, Haifei Xu^#¹, Hao Ji¹, Baoqian Zhai², Jinfeng Zhu¹, Mingde Gao³, Haixia Zhu², Xiaolin Wang¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Urology, Tumor Hospital Affiliated to Nantong University, Nantong University, Nantong 226361, People's Republic of China.
² Cancer Research Center Nantong, Tumor Hospital Affiliated to Nantong University, Nantong University, Nantong 226361, People's Republic of China.
³ Department of Urology, Medical College of Nantong University, Nantong 226019, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Objective: To investigate the association between KRT17 and the prognosis in bladder cancer patients.

Methods: The clinical data of 101 patients with bladder cancer from May 2013 to May 2015 were retrospectively analyzed. At the same time, the expression of KRT17 and its correlation with clinicopathological factors were examined by immunohistochemistry. We search the prognostic value of KRT17 in bladder cancer from the cancer genome map (TCGA) online database. To explore the possible cellular mechanism, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was used. The patients were divided into two groups: high expression of KRT17 and low expression of KRT17. The patients were followed up for 5 years to observe the survival. Kaplan-Meier method and Log rank test were used for univariate survival analysis, and Cox regression analysis was used for multivariate analysis. Finally, a nomogram was constructed on this basis for internal verification.

Results: Among the 101 patients, 46 (45.5%) were in the KRT17 low expression group and 55 (54.5%) in the high KRT17 expression group. After 5 years of follow-up, 79 patients survived with a survival rate of 78.2% and 22 patients died with a mortality rate of 21.8%. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that OS and PFS of patients with high expression of KRT17 were significantly higher than those of patients with low expression of KRT17 (p<0.001, p=0.005). Cox multivariate analysis showed that KRT17 expression was an independent risk factor for tumor progression (p=0.019). And tumor size, vascular tumor thrombus, and T stage also affected tumor progression (p<0.05). In the internal validation, the c-index of nomogram was 0.898 (95% CI: 0.854-0.941).

Conclusion: The decreased expression of KRT17 is associated with poor prognosis in patients with bladder cancer. KRT17 can be used as a novel predictive biomarker to provide a new therapeutic target for bladder cancer patients.

Keywords: bladder cancer; keratin17; nomograph; overall survival; prognosis; progression-free survival; risk factors.

Grants and funding

This work was supported financially by grants from the Nantong Science and technology plan fund (MS22019010) and Clinical medicine program of Nantong University (Youth Program – 2019LQ013).