GALNT14 genotype is associated with perineural invasion, lymph node metastasis and overall survival in resected cholangiocarcinoma

Cholangiocarcinoma is a rare, sporadic and aggressive type of cancer. The genetic basis of cholangiocarcinoma remains poorly understood. The present study investigated the prognostic role of the N-acetylgalactosaminyltransferase 14 (GALNT14)-rs9679162 genotype, an effective therapeutic response predictor for hepatocellular carcinoma in patients with cholangiocarcinoma receiving surgical resection. A cohort of patients with intrahepatic or perihilar cholangiocarcinoma (n=112) were retrospectively recruited. Of these patients, 31.3, 49.1 and 19.6% had GALNT14 ‘TT’, ‘TG’ and ‘GG’ genotypes, respectively. The patient's genotype distributions did not deviate significantly from those of the ethnic reference cohorts, HapMap-Chinese Han Beijing and Chinese Han Metropolitan Denver. The genotype ‘TT’ was associated with unfavorable overall survival in univariate analysis (P=0.023). Furthermore, two tumor characteristics, perineural and vascular invasion, were independently associated with unfavorable overall survival (P=0.001 and P=0.002, respectively). The ‘TT’ genotypes were independently associated with two known predictors of unfavorable prognosis, perineural invasion (P=0.035) and lymph node metastasis (P=0.005) in a multivariate linear regression analysis. When compared with the two reference genotype cohorts, the ‘TT’ genotype was significantly higher in patients with perineural invasion (P=0.049, Beijing cohort; P=0.034, Denver cohort). Similar enrichment of the ‘TT’ genotype was also revealed in patients with lymph node metastasis (P=0.046, Beijing cohort; P=0.032 Denver cohort). In conclusion, the GALNT14-rs9679162 ‘TT’ genotype was associated with perineural invasion and lymph node metastasis, as well as unfavorable overall survival in patients with resected cholangiocarcinoma.