Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the predominant form of liver cancer, is associated with high mortality rates both in the United States and globally. Despite current advances in immunotherapy regimens, there is a scarcity of biomarkers to guide therapy selection. Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and glypican-3 have been proposed as biomarkers for HCC, but they do not provide any prognostic benefit for modeling disease progression. Agrin, a secreted proteoglycan, is frequently overexpressed in HCC and plays prominent role(s) in the liver tumor microenvironment (TME) to promote hepatocarcinogenesis. Here we employed a pilot single-center retrospective investigation to assess the prognostic value of agrin in HCC. Our evidence suggests that elevated serum agrin levels are associated with poor prognosis and performance among HCC patients. Multivariate Cox regression models indicate that secreted agrin serves as a better prognostic indicator compared to AFP that is significantly correlated with other secreted biomarkers (e.g., IL6). Cumulatively, this work demonstrates a promising clinical value of agrin in the detection and prognosis of HCC.