Int J Med Sci 2017; 14(9):885-890. doi:10.7150/ijms.19734 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. Institute of Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan;
2. Department of Surgery, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;
3. Graduate Institute of Biomedical Sciences, China Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan;
4. Center for Molecular Medicine, China Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;
5. Institute of Biotechnology, National Tsing-Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan;
6. Division of General Surgery, Department of Surgery, Tungs' Taichung MetroHarbour Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;
7. Department of Medical Research, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;
8. Department of Emergency Medicine, School of Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University, Taichung, Taiwan;
9. Department of Emergency Medicine, Chung Shan Medical University Hospital, Taichung, Taiwan;
10. Department of Biotechnology, Asia University, Taichung, Taiwan.
*These authors contributed equally to this work.
Lewis antigens related to the ABO blood group are fucosylated oligosaccharides and are synthesized by specific glycosyltransferases (FUTs). FUTs are involved in various biological processes including cell adhesion and tumor progression. The fucosyltransferase-2 gene (FUT2) encodes alpha (1,2) fucosyltransferase, which is responsible for the addition of the alpha (1,2)-linkage of fucose to glycans. Aberrant fucosylation occurs frequently during the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the association of FUT2 polymorphisms with HCC development has not been studied. Therefore, we aimed to investigate the association of FUT2 polymorphisms with demographic, etiological, and clinical characteristics and with susceptibility to HCC. In this study, a total of 339 patients and 720 controls were recruited. The genotypes of FUT2 at four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs; rs281377, rs1047781, rs601338, and rs602662) were detected by real-time polymerase chain reaction from these samples. Compared with the wild-type genotype at SNP rs1047781, which is homozygous for nucleotides AA, at least one polymorphic T allele (AT or TT) displayed significant association with clinical stage (p = 0.048) and tumor size (p = 0.022). Our study strongly implicates the polymorphic locus rs1047781 of FUT2 as being associated with HCC development.
Keywords: Fucosyltransferase-2, Hepatocellular carcinoma, Single-nucleotide polymorphism