Down-regulation of RhoE is associated with progression and poor prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background: RhoE is an atypical member of Rho GTPases family, which is a crucial regulator of cytoskeletal dynamics, cell cycle progression, and cell proliferation. Previous studies have reported that RhoE was aberrantly expressed in several human cancers, but the role of RhoE in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remained poor understood.

Objectives: This study investigated the expression of RhoE and its clinical significance on the outcome of patients with HCC.

Methods: The expression of RhoE was examined in HCC patients and then the prognostic impact of the RhoE expression status was evaluated by univariate and multivariate analysis.

Results: RhoE was down-regulated in HCC cell lines and tissues compared with normal hepatocyte line (HL-7702) and non-cancerous liver tissues. The expression of RhoE was significantly negatively associated with serum AFP (P = 0.013) and tumor grade (P = 0.016). Furthermore, the patients with low expression of RhoE had a shorter survival (P = 0.002) than those with high expression. Univariate and multivariate analysis showed that RhoE expression was a significant and independent prognostic predictor for HCC patients (P = 0.016).

Conclusions: RhoE, down-regulated in patients with HCC, could serve as an independent prognostic predictor for patients with HCC.