Clinicopathological and prognostic significance of syntaxin 16 in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma
HUANG Xing
LI Yuan
GAO Yang
ZHENG Xia
QU Wenshu
Abstract：Objective To investigate the expression characteristics of syntaxin 16(STX16)in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC)and analyze its correlation with clinicopathological parameters and prognosis.Methods The differential expression,diagnostic efficacy,and prognostic association of STX16 in HCC and adjacent tissues were analyzed based on the Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA)database.Clinical specimens from 132 HCC patients at Jiangsu Cancer Hospital were collected.Immunohistochemistry was used to detect STX16 protein expression in tumor and adjacent tissues.Its correlation with clinical-pathological parameters and overall survival(OS)was analyzed.Results In the TCGA cohort,STX16 expression was significantly higher in HCC tissues than in adjacent tissues(5.31±0.60 vs.3.24±0.39,P＜0.01).The receiver operating characteristic(ROC)curve analysis indicated that STX16 has good diagnostic value for HCC,with an area under the curve(AUC)of 0.940,a sensitivity of 87.0％,and a specificity of 90.0％.Survival analysis revealed that patients with high STX16 expression had significantly shorter progression-free interval(PFI:13.1 months vs.29.2 months,P=0.005)and overall survival(OS:48.9 months vs.69.3 months,P=0.035).Multivariate Cox regression confirmed that high STX16 expression was an independent risk factor for both PFI(HR=1.546,95％CI:1.047-2.282,P=0.028)and OS(HR=1.579,95％CI:1.019-2.448,P=0.041).In the clinical cohort,STX16 expression was also significantly higher in HCC tissues than in adjacent tissues(immunohistochemical score:5.99 vs.1.75,P＜0.01).Patients with high STX16 expression had shorter OS(44.0 months vs.not reached,P＜0.01).Cox regression analysis found that STX16 expression level was a risk factor for OS but not an independent prognostic factor.Conclusion STX16 is significantly overexpressed in HCC,closely associated with aggressive tumor features and poor prognosis,and may serve as a potential independent prognostic biomarker for HCC.
Keywords：hepatocellular carcinomasyntaxin 16biomarkerprognosissurvival analysis
Publication Date：2026-02-28
Online Publishing Date：2026-04-01(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：7( 141-147 )