Elevation of MAP17 enhances the malignant behavior of cells via the Akt/mTOR pathway in hepatocellular carcinoma.

MAP17, a small non-glycosylated membrane protein, was significantly up-regulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues in our previous genome-wide microarray analysis. In this study, quantitative real-time RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry were applied to examine MAP17 mRNA and protein expression in primary HCC and matched peritumoral tissues. The disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) was estimated using the Kaplan-Meier analysis. The expression of MAP17 was significantly higher in HCC tissues compared to the paired peritumoral tissues at both mRNA and protein levels. High MAP17 expression was positively correlated with gender, distant metastasis, early recurrence (≤ 2 year), and serum alpha-fetoprotein (all