CXCL10 Expression in Tumor Tissues and is An Independent Prognostic Indicator of Pancreatic Cancer

Abstract Background: Pancreatic cancer is a malignant disease with difficult diagnosis and high mortality. The most common type is pancreatic duct adenocarcinoma (PDAC). CXCL10 is of great significance in the treatment of immune diseases and cancer. Here, we evaluated the expression of CXCL10 in pancreatic cancer and its clinical significance. Results: The results of the TCGA database showed that the expression of CXCL10 in pancreatic cancer tissues was higher than that in matched adjacent tissues (P <0.05). Patients with high expression of CXCL10 had a poor prognosis compared with those with low expression of CXCL10 (P=0.0051).We found that CXCL10 was positively and strongly correlated with tumour-infiltrating neutrophils and macrophages in PDAC (P<0.0001). We also performed CXCL10 immunohistochemical staining in a tissue microarray (TMA), which included tumour samples collected from 119 PDAC patients (each sample was matched with an adjacent tissue sample). The expression level of CXCL10 in PDAC tissues was prominently higher than that in the matched adjacent tissues (P = 0.0001). Analysis of clinicopathological factors suggested that the high expression of CXCL10 was correlated with the patient's T stage (P = 0.020). In addition, higher CXCL10 expression was significantly associated with worse overall survival of PDAC patients (P = 0.012). The results of COS multivariate analysis suggested that age (P=0.005), histological grade (P=0.001), TNM stage (P=0.017) and CXCL10 expression (P=0.024) were independent prognostic factors for pancreatic cancer. Conclusion: Our data indicate that CXCL10 is highly expressed in PDAC and may be used as an independent clinical prognostic indicator for PDAC.