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ORIGINAL ARTICLE

Elevated TIAM2 expression promotes tumor progression and is associated with unfavorable prognosis in pancreatic cancer

, , , , , & show all
Pages 59-67 | Received 18 Oct 2020, Accepted 16 Nov 2020, Published online: 07 Dec 2020
 

Abstract

Background and aim

As a Rac1 guanine nucleotide exchange factor, T‐cell lymphoma invasion and metastasis 2 (TIAM2) has been reported to be correlated with malignant phenotypes in several cancers, but its prognostic significance and function in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) was not investigated.

Methods

The expression patterns of TIAM2 and patient survival were analyzed in a large cohort of 303 patients with radical surgical resection of PDAC, using immunohistochemical staining in tissue microarrays. Data mining was applied to evaluate TIAM2 expression and patient survival at the mRNA level. The function of TIAM2 in proliferation, motility and invasion of pancreactic cancer (PC) cells was also investigated.

Results

TIAM2 expression was significantly increased in PDAC compared with para-tumor tissues (p < .0001). The expression of TIAM2 was associated with histopathological grade (p = .008), tumor location (p = .013), and pathological T stage (p = .029). For survival, patients with high TIAM2 expression had significantly poor prognosis in some subgroups. In addition, multivariate analyses showed that the combination of TIAM2 and the pathological N stage largely enhanced the prognostic efficiency, and was found to be as an independent prognostic indicator in patients with PDAC. Data mining elucidated that TIAM2 mRNA expression level was increased in tumor tissues and correlated with patient survival. Furthermore, high TIAM2 expression was common in PC cells. Downregulation of TIAM2 suppressed cell proliferation, migration and invasion in PC.

Conclusions

High expression of TIAM2 might be a meaningful prognostic factor for PDAC patients, and TIAM2 participates in tumor progression in PDAC.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The present study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81972324) and China Academy of Medical Sciences Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (Grant No. 2016-I2M-3-019).

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