Table 2.

The correlations and activities of FGF21 in cancers

Cancer	Clinical study		In vivo study	In vitro study	Reference
	Correlation with circulating FGF21 levels	Correlation with intra-tumoral FGF21 levels
Liver cancer	+	+	Serum FGF21 levels were different in different stages of tumorigenesis; Intratumoral FGF21 knockdown inhibited sorafenib-resistant HCC; Deficiency of FGF21 promoted obesogenic diet-induced HCC; FGF21 knockout promoted autophagy-deficient hepatoma; Overexpression of FGF21 or exogenous FGF21 treatment delayed carcinogen-induced HCC tumorigenesis; FGF21 treatment promotes carcinogen-induced HCC tumorigenesis in rats.	Overexpression of FGF21 increased sorafenib resistance; FGF21 treatment suppressed carcinogen-induced oxidative stress.	89-91, 94, 95, 97, 99
Thyroid cancer	+	Undetectable	Unknown	FGF21 treatment promoted tumor cell migration and invasion.	85
Prostate cancer	Unknown	-	Overexpression of FGF21 inhibits prostate cancer tumorigenesis.	Overexpression of FGF21 inhibits prostate cancer cell viability.	100
Non-small cell lung cancer	Unknown	+	Unknown	Overexpression of FGF21 promoted tumor cell growth and migration, while down-regulated FGF21 presented opposite effects on lung cancer cells.	86, 101
Melanoma	Unknown	Unknown	Overexpression of FGF21 enhanced tumorigenesis; Serum FGF21 levels were negatively connected with the metastatic ability.	Overexpression of FGF21 enhanced cell aggressiveness and tumorigenicity; Conditioned medium from exogenous FGF21 treated macrophage inhibited melanoma cell viability.	102, 103
Pancreatic cancer	Unknown	-	Pharmacological supplementation of FGF21 delayed cancer development under obesogenic diet challenge.	Decreased FGF21 levels in pancreatic cancer cells.	104
Breast cancer	+	Unknown			106
Renal cancer	+	Unknown			108
Colorectal cancer	+	Unknown			107-109, 112
Gastric cancer	+	Unknown			113
Endometrioid carcinoma	+	Unknown			114
Urothelial carcinoma	+	Unknown			115