Clinical significance of CXCL17 in cervical cancer

As an acknowledged inflammatory cytokine, CXCL17 is also participated in various malignancies, including pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, lung cancer, colon cancer, and thyroid carcinoma. Nevertheless, it is still unclear whether CXCL17 is correlated with tumorigenesis and advancement of cervical cancer. The aim of this study was to study the clinical significance of CXCL17 in cervical cancer patients and its associations with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers. The present study analyzed the CXCL17 expression pattern in cervical cancer and investigated its correlation with clinicopathological parameters in 80 cervical cancer cases. Furthermore, the correlation between CXCL17 and EMT markers were evaluated. The results showed CXCL17 expression was positive in 67.50% (54/80) cases. Our results revealed CXCL17 expression was significantly correlated with lymph node metastasis and clinical stage (P < .05). GPR35 expression was significantly enhanced in cervical cancer tissues. More importantly, CXCL17 expression was correlated with snail or vimentin expression. Simultaneously, CXCL17 expression had a negative correlation with E-cadherin expression. These results demonstrated the close correlation between CXCL17 expression and EMT markers. Our findings revealed that CXCL17 promotes advancement of cervical cancer via influence of some critical EMT markers.