The expression and clinical prognostic value of WDR4 and EIF2A in hepatocellular carcinoma tissue

Objective To discuss the expression and clinical prognostic significance of WD repeat domain 4 (WDR4) and eukaryotic translation initiation factor 2A (EIF2A) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissue.Methods A total of 90 HCC patients who were admitted to Affiliated Jinling Hospital,Medical School of Nanjing Uiversity from January 2019 to January 2020 were selected and their clinical data were collected. R language (version 4.2.1) was used to analyze the transcriptome sequencing data of WDR4 mRNA and EIF2A mRNA in 327 pairs of HCC and adjacent tissues from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The expression of WDR4 and EIF2A in both HCC and adjacent tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry. The relationship between the expression of WDR4 and EIF2A in HCC tissues and clinical pathological features was analyzed. Kaplan Meier method was used to analyze the effect of WDR4 and EIF2A expression on the prognosis of HCC patients. The influencing factors on the prognosis of HCC was analyzed by the Cox regression model.Results The levels of WDR4 mRNA and EIF2A mRNA in the HCC tissues were significantly higher than those in the adjacent tissues (P<0.05). The positive rates of WDR4 and EIF2A in the HCC tissues were remarkably higher than those in the adjacent tissues (P<0.05). The expression of WDR4 mRNA in the HCC tissues was positively correlated with EIF2A mRNA expression (r=0.404, P<0.001). A significant positive correlation was found between the expression of WDR4 and EIF2A protein in the HCC tissues (r=0.667, P＜0.05). Furthermore, the positive rates of WDR4 and EIF2A in HCC tissues with a maximum tumor diameter >5 cm, TNM stage III and invasive type were significantly higher than those with a maximum tumor diameter ≤5 cm, TNM stage I-II and non-invasive type (P<0.05). The WDR4 positive group showed a significantly lower cumulative 3-year survival rate than the WDR4 negative group (P=0.016), while the EIF2A positive group had a significantly lower cumulative 3-year survival rate than the EIF2A negative group (P=0.022). Tumor TNM stage III, tumor maximum diameter >5 cm, and positive WDR4 and EIF2A expression were the independent risk factors for the poor prognosis of HCC patients.Conclusions The increased expression of WDR4 and EIF2A in HCC tissues is associated with poor clinicopathological characteristics, which can serve as tumor markers for evaluating the prognosis of HCC.