Human hepatocellular carcinomas with “Stemness”-related marker expression: keratin 19 expression and a poor prognosis

Abstract

K19 was well correlated with clinicopathologic features of tumor aggressiveness, compared to other stemness-related proteins. K19-positive HCCs showed significantly increased EMT-related protein and mRNA expression, suggesting that they may acquire more invasive characteristics, compared to K19-negative HCCs through the up-regulation of EMT-associated genes.