Expression of CMTM4 Shows Clinical Significance in Lung Cancer.

BACKGROUND:Human chemokine-like factor (CKLF)-like MARVEL transmembrane domain-containing family (CMTM) is implicated in the pathogenesis of immune, reproductive systems and various cancers. However, the expression and clinical significance of CMTM4 in lung cancer have not been identified.METHODS:We performed immunohistochemistry to detect the expression of CMTM4 in 75 paired lung adenocarcinoma and non-tumor lung tissues. The correlation between CMTM4 expression and clinical significance of lung cancer patients was analyzed by Chi-square test. Kaplan-Meier method and Log-Rank test were used to calculate the survival time of lung cancer patients.RESULTS:We found that CMTM4 was positively expressed in 34/75 (45.3%) cases of lung adenocarcinoma tissues, while positively expressed in 59/75 (78.6%) cases of non-tumor lung tissues, suggesting a lower expression of CMTM4 in lung adenocarcinoma tissues than non-tumor lung tissues (P<0.05). In addition, the negative expression of CMTM4 was associated with gender, smoking, and metastasis in lung cancer patients. Moreover, lung cancer patients with negative expression of CMTM4 had a shorter survival time than the patients with positive expression of CMTM4. COX regression analysis showed that CMTM4 was an independent prognostic factor for the overall survival of lung cancer patients.CONCLUSIONS:Our study supports that CMTM4 can be used as a new marker for the treatment and prognosis of lung cancer.