Abstract
Tsutomu Kume1 and Tarek Shackour1
1Feinberg Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute, Northwestern University School of Medicine, Chicago 60611, IL, USA
Correspondence to:
Tsutomu Kume, email: t-kume@northwestern.edu
Tarek Shackour, email: tarekshackour2017@u.northwestern.edu
Keywords: FOXC1; cancer; T-Stage
Received: October 20, 2018 Accepted: November 05, 2018 Published: November 27, 2018
ABSTRACT
Background: Aberrations in the expression of the transcription factor forkhead box C1 (FOXC1) have been linked to a number of malignancies. Here, we characterized the relationship between FOXC1 and cancer progression by conducting a meta-analysis of studies that reported the frequency of FOXC1 expression in tumors of different stages (T1, T2, T3, T4).
Materials and Method: Relevant articles were retrieved from the Medline database by searching for the terms “FOXC1” and “cancer”; then, the retrieved articles were reviewed individually, and studies that were of multivariate cohort design, evaluated FOXC1 expression via immunohistochemical staining, and assessed the relationship between FOXC1 expression and cancer T-stage were included in our meta-analysis.
Results: Our search terms identified 128 studies, 5 of which met all inclusion criteria. A total of 850 tumor samples were evaluated in the 5 studies; 452 samples were from early-stage (T1-T2) tumors, and 398 were from late-stage (T3-T4) tumors. FOXC1 was expressed in 60.7% (516/850) of all samples, in 54.6% (247/452) of early-stage tumor samples, and in 67.5% (269/398) of late-stage tumor samples. When calculated relative to early-stage samples, the pooled risk for FOXC1 expression in late-stage samples was 1.238 (95% CI = 1.061–1.444, p = 0.007).
Conclusions: The results from our meta-analysis of 5 studies indicate that FOXC1 is 23.8% more likely to be expressed in late-stage tumors than in early-stage tumors.