PFKFB4 as a promising biomarker to predict a poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer

Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the most common types of cancer worldwide. Previous studies have reported that phosphofructo-2-kinase/fructose-2,6-biphosphatase 4 (PFKFB4) functions as an oncoprotein in various types of cancer. However, the association between PFKFB4 and GC remains unclear. The present study analyzed the expression levels of PFKFB4 in 148 GC tissue samples, including 46 tumor tissues with matched adjacent normal tissues, using immunohistochemistry, compared the expression levels of PFKFB4 between GC and adjacent normal tissues, and determined the association between PFKFB4 expression levels and patient clinicopathological characteristics. In addition, survival curves were generated using the Kaplan-Meier (KM) plotter database to evaluate the association between PFKFB4 expression and GC prognosis. The results revealed that PFKFB4 expression was upregulated in GC tissues compared with in adjacent normal tissues. PFKFB4 expression was associated with patient age, tumor size, pathological tumor (pT) stage and tumor-node-metastasis (pTNM) stage, and upregulated expression levels of PFKFB4 were observed in tumor tissues from patients <65 years old (compared with that in patients ≥65 years old), as well as patients with a larger tumor size and an advanced stage (pT and pTNM stage) disease. In addition, KM survival analysis demonstrated that patients with low PFKFB4 expression had a significantly improved overall survival (OS), first progression survival and post-progression survival times compared with those with high PFKFB4 expression. Furthermore, PFKFB4 expression was negatively associated with OS time in patients with late pT and pTNM stage disease. In conclusion, the results of the present study indicated that the upregulated PFKFB4 expression in GC tissues may serve as a biomarker for a more advanced disease and a poor prognosis in patients with GC.