The expression of SGK1 and FTO in rectal cancer tissue and their relationship with the sensitivity of neoadjuvant radiotherapy and chemotherapy and prognosis

CHANG Peijiang; ZHOU Mingyu; WAN Shiyang; GAO Zhen; LENG Ning

doi:10.3969/j.issn.1674-4136.2025.05.006

Abstract：Objective To investigate the expression of glucocorticoid induced protein kinase 1(SGK1)and fat obesity related genes(FTO)in rectal cancer tissues,and to analyze their relationship with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy(NACRT)sensitivity and prognosis.Methods One hundred and twenty rectal cancer patients who received NACRT from January 2019 to January 2021 were collected and divided into an ineffective group of 45 cases and an effective group of 75 cases based on the efficacy of NACRT treatment.Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression of SGK1 and FTO proteins in cancer and adjacent tissues.Chi square test was used to compare the differential expression of SGK1 and FTO proteins in rectal cancer patients with different clinical pathological features.Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to explore the factors affecting the efficacy of NACRT in patients with rectal cancer.The impact of SGK1 and FTO protein expression on the prognosis of rectal cancer patients was conducted by Kaplan Meier curve analysis.Results The positive rate of SGK1 in cancer tissues was higher than that in adjacent tissues(68.33％vs.16.67％,P＜0.001).The positive rate of FTO in cancer tissues was higher than that in adjacent tissues(71.67％vs.15.00％,P＜0.001).The positive rates of SGK1 and FTO in cancer tissue of patients with TNM stage Ⅲ rectal cancer were higher than those of patients with TNM stage Ⅱ(both P＜0.05).There were 45 cases in the NACRT ineffective group and 75 cases in the effective group.The proportion of patients with TNM stage Ⅲ,SGK1 positive rate,and FTO positive rate in the ineffective group were higher than those in the effective group(all P＜0.05).SGK1 positivity,FTO positivity,and TNM stage Ⅲ were risk factors affecting the efficacy of NACRT in rectal cancer(P＜0.05).The 3-year overall survival rate of SGK1 positive group was lower than that of negative group patients(47.56％vs.84.21％,P＜0.001).The 3-year overall survival rate of FTO positive group was lower than that of negative group patients(50.00％vs.82.35％,P=0.002).Conclusions The increased expression of SGK1 and FTO in rectal cancer tissue is associated with TNM stage and serves as tumor markers for evaluating the sensitivity and prognosis of NACRT treatment in rectal cancer.