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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Med.
Sec. Hepatobiliary Diseases
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmed.2025.1571761
This article is part of the Research Topic Digital Technologies in Hepatology: Diagnosis, Treatment, and Epidemiological Insights View all 5 articles
Serum Golgi protein 73 (GP73) is a diagnostic and prognostic marker of Hepatocellular carcinoma
Provisionally accepted- 1 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
- 2 Department of Pathology, Second Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University, Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
- 3 Department of Clinical Laboratory, Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Suzhou, China
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) constitutes a significant global health burden, and is characterized by limited early detection methods and poor survival rates. Golgi protein 73 (GP73), previously associated with liver-related diseases, has a controversial diagnostic value for HCC. The present study aimed to determine the diagnostic efficacy of serum GP73 (sGP73) levels in HCC and to explore their potential correlations with the development of HCC. The levels of sGP73 and serum alpha-fetoprotein (sAFP)were measured in 134 HCC patients, 200 healthy controls (HCs), and 45 non-HCC patients with various liver diseases. sGP73 and sAFP were markedly higher in HCC patients than in HCs and non-HCC patients. However, sGP73 showed significantly higher sensitivity as a diagnostic marker for HCC than sAFP. The combination of sGP73 and sAFP further improved the accuracy (AUROC: 0.830). Besides, in the immunohistochemical staining analyses, sGP73-positive patients had lower expression of CD4 + and CD8 + T cells, higher expression of Foxp3 + Treg cells, higher expression of nuclear Ki67, and lower expression of IFN-γ than GP73-negative patients. In addition, sGP73-positive patients tended to have higher mortality rate, higher rate of metastasis, higher AFP levels, and more pronounced liver inflammation and damage than GP73-negative patients. The present results suggest that sGP73 could be utilized as a marker for the diagnosis of HCC, and may be implicated in the development of HCC through its interactions with the tumor microenvironment.
Keywords: Golgi protein-73 (GP73), Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP), Hepatocellular Carcinoma, Diagnostic marker, Tumor immune microenvironment
Received: 06 Feb 2025; Accepted: 31 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Wang, Cui, Zhu, Zhu and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Chunyan He, Department of Clinical Laboratory, Kunshan Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Suzhou, China
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