The AP2M1 gene expression is a promising biomarker for predicting survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma.

There is a growing need for the discovery of new prognostic factors for cases where the scoring and staging system of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) does not result in a clear definition. We analyzed whether AP-2 complex subunit mu (AP2M1) expression could be a new prognostic marker for HCC based on the roles of AP2M1 in influencing hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) promoter regulation and hepatitis C virus (HCV) assembly. Patient data were extracted from cohorts of the Gene Expression Omnibus (GSE10186), International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Differential expression value between matched cancer and normal liver was identified using ICGC cohort. Subsequently, we compared AP2M1 expression as a prognostic gene with other well-known prognostic genes for HCC, using the time-dependent area under the curve (AUC) of the Uno's C-index, the AUC value of the receiver operating characteristics at 5 years, Kaplan-Meier survival curve, and multivariate analysis. Particularly, TCGA and GSE10186 patients were divided into subgroups based on alcohol intake, hepatitis B, and C viral infections, and analyzed in the same methods. The AP2M1 expression values in patients with cancer were much higher than matched normal liver. The AP2M1 level showed excellent prognosis predictions in comparison with existing markers in the three independent cohorts (n = 647). In particular, it was more predictive of prognosis than other markers in alcohol intake and HCV infections. In conclusion, we were confident that AP2M1 provides sufficient value as a new prognostic marker for HCC especially patients with HCV infection and/or alcohol intake.