Meta-analysis of Osteopontin splice variants in cancer

BACKGROUND: The cytokine Osteopontin is a mediator of tumor progression and cancer metastasis. In 2006, we reported that (in addition to the full-length form -a) splice variants of Osteopontin (forms -b and -c) are produced selectively by transformed cells. Through June 2021, 36 PubMed-indexed journal articles have studied Osteopontin splice variants in various cancer patients. METHODS: Applying a categorical approach previously developed by us, here we conduct a meta-analysis of the pertinent literature. We supplement this with evaluation of the relevant entries in the TSVdb database, which focusses on splice variant expression, thus including the additional variants -4 and -5. The analysis covers 5886 patients across 15 tumors from the literature and 10,446 patients across 33 tumors from TSVdb. RESULTS: The database yields positive results more frequently than the categorical meta-analysis. The two sources are in agreement on the elevation of OPN-a, OPN-b, and OPN-c in lung cancer and the elevation of OPN-c in breast cancer as compared to healthy tissue. Specific splice variants are associated with grade, stage, or patient survival pertaining to various cancers. CONCLUSIONS: There are cases of persisting discrepancies, which require further investigation to clarify the Osteopontin splice variant utilization, so that their diagnostic, prognostic and potentially predictive potential can be brought to fruition. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-023-10854-x.