Overexpression of Tiam1 in hepatocellular carcinomas predicts poor prognosis of HCC patients

Little research has been done to test the usefulness of T-lymphoma invasion and metastasis 1 (Tiam1) as a prognostic marker for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In this study, we investigated Tiam1 expression and its prognostic value for HCC. HCC surgical tissue samples were taken from 152 HCC patients who had been followed up for 5 years. Overexpression of Tiam1 (Tiam1 2+ to 3+) was shown in 63.8% of the cases. The Tiam1 expression level did not correlate with any clinicopathological parameters. However, survival analysis showed that the Tiam1 overexpression group had a significantly shorter overall survival time than the Tiam1 downexpression group (p = 0.008). Multivariate analysis showed that Tiam1 expression was a significant and independent prognostic parameter (p = 0.042) for HCC patients. Tiam1 expression may be a novel and independent predictor for the prognosis of HCC patients. (C) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.