Expression and clinical significance of protein kinase CK2β in hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective To investigate the expression and clinical significance of protein kinase CK2β in hepatocellular carcinoma ( HCC) tissue and the association of CK2β expression with patient prognosis. Methods HCC tissue and adjacent tissue samples were collected from127 HCC patients Who were diagnosed in Department of Hepatopancreatobiliary Surgery, The first Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou Universi-ty from Januany 2012 to June 2013, and immunohistochemistry was used to measure the expression of CK2β. The association of CK2β ex-pression with clinical features of HCC patients was analyzed. A total of 20 HCC tissue samples, 20 adjacent tissue samples, 20 cirrhotic tis-sue samples, and 20 normal liver tissue samples were collected from March to June 2018 in our hospital, and Western blot and real-timePCR were used to measure the protein and mRNA expression of CK2β in these tissue samples. A one-way analysis of variance was used forcomparison of means between multiple groups, and Bonferroni test was used for further comparison between two groups; the chi-square testwas used for comparison of categorical data between groups. The Mann-Whitney U test or the Kruskal-Wallis H test was used to investi-gate the association of CK2β expression with clinical features. The Kaplan-Meier method was used for survival analysis, and the log-ranktest was used for comparison between groups. Results Western blot and real-time PCR showed that the expression rate of CK2β in HCCtissue was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissue, cirrhotic tissue, and normal liver tissue ( P < 0. 05) ; there was no significantdifference in the expression of CK2β between adjacent tissue and cirrhotic tissue ( P > 0. 05) , and the expression of CK2β in adjacent tissueand cirrhotic tissue was significantly higher than that in normal liver tissue ( P < 0. 05) . Immunohistochemical staining showed that there wasa significant difference in the positive rate of CK2β between HCC tissue and adjacent tissue in the 127 HCC patients ( 85. 8% vs 63. 0%, P < 0. 001) . There was a significant difference in CK2β expression distribution between HCC patients with different ages ( Z =-2. 277, P = 0. 023) , presence or absence of liver cirrhosis ( Z =-2. 144, P = 0. 032) , different tumor sizes ( Z =-2. 289, P = 0. 004) , or differ-ent Edmondson-Steiner pathological grades ( χ2= 8. 210, P = 0. 016) . The Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis showed that the stronglypositive CK2β expression group had a significantly shorter postoperative survival time than the moderately positive, weakly positive, and neg-ative CK2β expression groups ( all P < 0. 001) . Conclusion CK2β may be involved in the development and progression of HCC, and itspositive expression is associated with the prognosis of HCC patients.