Abstract
Accumulated studies have provided controversial evidences of prognostic value for signal transducer and activator of transcription proteins 3 (STAT3) in cancers. To address this inconsistency, we performed a systematic analysis to determine whether STAT3 can serve as a prognostic marker in human cancers. STAT3 expression was assessed using Oncomine analysis. cBioPortal, Kaplan-Meier Plotter, and Prognoscan were performed to identify the prognostic roles of STAT3 in human cancers. The copy number alteration, mutation, interactive analysis, and visualize the altered networks were performed by cBioPortal. We found that STAT3 was more frequently overexpressed in lung, ovarian, gastric, blood and brain cancers than their normal tissues and its expression might be negatively related with the prognosis. In addition, STAT3 mutation mainly occurred in uterine cancer and existed in a hotspot in SH2 domain. Those findings suggest that STAT3 might serve as a diagnostic and therapeutic target for certain types of cancer, such as lung, ovarian, gastric, blood and brain cancers. However, future research is required to validate our findings and thus promote the clinical utility of STAT3 in those cancers prognosis evaluation.
Highlights
Cancer is one of the major causes threatening human health and life [1]
Our analysis revealed that STAT3 was over-expressed in brain and cns, gastric, head and neck, melanoma, myeloma cancers, but was under-expressed in breast, leukemia, liver, lymphoma, and sarcoma cancers as compared to that in normal tissue
In Oncomine analysis, STAT3 was found to be unregulated in brain and CNS, gastric, head and neck, melanoma, myeloma cancer, but deregulated in breast, leukemia, liver, lymphoma, and sarcoma cancer
Summary
Cancer is one of the major causes threatening human health and life [1]. Despite significant advances in diagnostic and treatment modalities, the average fiveyear survival rate for cancer patients is still extremely poor [2]. Signal transducer and activator of transcription proteins 3 (STAT3), a member of STAT family, is well demonstrated to exerts an important effect on tumorigenesis and tumor-related inflammation [6]. Activated STAT3 has been found in many human tumors, such as lung cancer [8], gastric carcinoma [9], cervical carcinoma [10], and meningiomas [11]. Mounting evidence have demonstrated STAT3-targeted therapy could effectively inhibit tumor development in various human cancers [12]. The prognostic value of STAT3 overexpression in human tumors is still controversial. In the current study, we carried out a systematic analysis combining thousands of gene expression or copy number variation analysis published online, to evaluate the expression pattern, potential functions and distinct prognostic value in cancer of STAT3
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