Collectively, our findings suggest that HOXA1 is involved in the regulation of prostate cancer progression, including cell growth, migration, invasion and metastasis.
Together, these validation data and mechanistic insights suggest that patients whose primary tumors express HOXA1 are among a high-risk metastasis subgroup that should be considered for anti-TGFβ therapy in adjuvant settings.
In addition, a high expression level of HOXA1 protein was positively correlated with the T classification (P < 0.001), the N classification (P < 0.001), distant metastasis (P = 0.004), and the clinical stage (P < 0.001) of HCC patients.
It was most notable that the expression levels of HOXA1, A2, C4 and B13 in melanoma with distant metastasis were higher than those in melanoma without it.