Table 1.
TOPK expression is a prognostic marker for cancer
| Site | Cancer type | Methodology | Findings | References |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Prostate | Neuroendocrine carcinoma, acinar adenocarcinoma | Transcriptome profiling, IHC | One of the top 10 genes overexpressed in small cell carcinoma | 57 |
| Adenocarcinoma | IHC, qRT-PCR | Upregulation associated with age, Gleason score, clinicopathological stage, metastatic spread, survival and PSA failure. Predictor for biochemical recurrence-free survival | 10 | |
| Prostatic adenocarcinoma | IHC, immunoblot, microarray | Expression correlates with lack of tissue differentiation, disease aggression and metastatic spread | 6 | |
| Prostatic adenocarcinoma | Custom qRT-PCR Microarray | Cancer/testis antigen for prostate cancer, expression correlates with Gleason score but not age, stage, or preoperative PSA | 58 | |
| Prostatic adenocarcinoma | IHC | Expression correlates with stage > T2c and Gleason score ≥ 8, PSA > 20 ng/ml | 59 | |
| Liver | Hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma | IHC | High expression in cholangiocarcinoma, lower expression in hepatocellular carcinoma. Low expression associated with poor prognosis in CCA | 60 |
| Hepatocellular carcinoma | qRT-PCR; immunoblot | Upregulation in all HCC cases | 61 | |
| Head and neck | Oral squamous cell carcinoma | IHC | Low expression associated with poor prognosis in young patients, high expression in older patients associated with poorly differentiated tumours, smokers, and late-stage disease. | 62 |
| Ovarian | Epithelial ovarian cancer | IHC, Immunoblot, qRT-PCR | High expression associated with poor progression-free survival and overall survival in early-stage cancer; Transactivation in EOC, less in borderline malignancy tumours | 44 |
| Brain | Glioblastoma multiforme | Immunoblot, IHC qRT-PCR | Upregulated in all GBM samples | 7 |
| Lung | Adenocarcinoma | IHC | High expression associated with poorly differentiated tumours, metastatic spread, high-TNM stage and reduced overall survival. Patients with combination of high TOPK and mutp53 had lowest prognosis | 63 |
| Haematological | Primary AML | qRT-PCR, immunoblotting | TOPK detected in 9/12 samples; 3/3 ALL samples and in plasmocytoma and blastic type mantle cell lymphoma. Weak expression in peripheral blood stem cells | 64 |
| Gastric | Gastric carcinoma | IHC, immunoblotting | Expression independently correlated with poor outcome | 65 |
| Oesophageal | Oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma | qRT-PCR, IHC, immunoblotting | Expression independently correlated with poor outcome | 66 |
| Colorectal | Colorectal carcinoma | IHC tissue microarray | No relationship between VEGFa gene amplification and TOPK expression/gene status | 67 |
Expression of TOPK in primary tumours is linked to enhanced tumour aggression, invasion and metastatic spread in a variety of cancers. Multivariate analysis of clinical samples from numerous sites indicates that a significant relationship exists between TOPK expression in tumour tissue and poor prognosis for patients.
Key: IHC immunohistochemistry, PSA prostate specific antigen, AML acute myeloid leukaemia, ALL acute lymphocytic leukaemia, TNM tumour, node and metastasis, EOC epithelial ovarian cancer, GBM glioblastoma multiform, CCA cholangiocarcinoma, VEGFa vascular endothelial growth factor A, TOPK T-LAK cell-originated protein kinase.