Clinicopathologic significance of LAIR-1 expression in hepatocellular carcinoma

Aim: Leukocyte-associated immunoglobulin-like receptor-1 (LAIR-1) is an immune inhibitory receptor which is expressed within most types of hematopoietic cells and negatively regulates immune responses. Recently, we found LAIR-1 expression to be present within tumors of nonhematopoietic lineages. However, the roles of LAIR-1 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) have yet to be examined. The purpose of this study was to investigate the expression of LAIR-1 in HCC tissue and assess its clinical significance at this site.

Materials and methods: Expression levels of LAIR-1 within HCC samples collected from 90 patients and compared with that of slides of normal liver tissue collected from 9 non-HCC patients were measured by immunohistochemistry using tissue microarrays. A semiquantitative score was assigned, as was based on staining intensity and percent of positive cells and a Spearman Rank correlation test was used to assess any potential significant correlations between LAIR-1 expression and clinicopathological factors. Overall survival analysis was performed using the Kaplan-Meier and Log Rank statistical test.

Results: LAIR-1 expression was detected in cancer tissue and adjacent tumor tissue, but not in normal liver tissue. The percent of LAIR-1-positive expression in cancer tissue of HCC samples was 97.78% (88/90) while that in adjacent tumor tissue was 96.67% (87/90). Significantly greater expression levels of LAIR-1 were obtained from cancer tissue (Mean ± SD = 5.722 ± 2.145) than that in adjacent tumor tissue (4.141 ± 1.486). In addition, LAIR-1 expression was found to be significantly correlated with pathological grade of HCC, T stage, and age. Expression levels of LAIR-1 were related with worse overall survival rates of HCC patients, especially in HCC patients with hepatic cirrhosis.

Conclusion: Results of this study show that LAIR-1 is expressed in HCC tissues and that high levels of LAIR-1 expression are associated with the poor cancer differentiation. In addition, overexpression of LAIR-1 was significantly associated with worse overall survival in the patients with HCC. These data suggest that LAIR-1 may be an independent predictor for clinical outcomes in patients with HCC.