?catenin is a marker of poor clinical characteristics and suppressed immune infiltration in testicular germ cell tumors.

ABSTRACT:

Background

WNT/?catenin (WNT?) pathway is activated in early stages of embryonic development. We aimed to evaluate the significance of ?catenin in germ cell tumors (GCTs) and explore associations with the inflamed environment.

Methods

Surgical specimens from 247 patients were analyzed. ?catenin expression was detected in the tumor tissue by immunohistochemistry and correlated with clinical characteristics, outcome, PD-L1 expression and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII). The Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA) was used to investigate the immune-cell related effects of ?catenin and PD-L1 encoding genes.

Results

?catenin was expressed in 86.2% of GCTs. The expression in seminomas was significantly lower compared to all subtypes of non-seminoma (all P??150) was associated with primary mediastinal non-seminoma (P?=?0.035), intermediate/poor risk disease (P?= 0.033) and high tumor markers (P?= 0.035). We observed a positive correlation with the PD-L1 in tumor and an inverse correlation with the SII. IPA uncovered relationships of CTNNB (?catenin) and CD274 (PD-L1) genes and their effects on differentiation, proliferation and activation of lymphocyte subtypes.

Conclusion

Herein, we showed that ?catenin is associated with male adult GCT characteristics as well as supressed immune environment.

SUBMITTER: Chovanec M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6215644 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature