Chemokines and their receptors have been proposed to play important roles in tumor progression and metastasis. To investigate their roles in the progression of primary and metastatic malignant liver tumors and their prognosis, we compared expression profiles of CXCL12/CXCR4, CCL20/CCR6, and CCL21/CCR7 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and colorectal liver metastases (CRLM). Immunohistochemistry was used to analyze the expression levels of the chemokine/chemokine receptor pairs in 29 HCC and 11 CRLM specimens and adjacent non-cancerous tissues, and correlations with clinicopathological variables and overall survival were determined. CCL20/CCR6 expression was higher in HCC than in adjacent non-cancerous tissues. High CCR6 expression in HCC was negatively associated with 5-year survival rate and was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival of HCC patients, whereas differences were not observed between CRLM and adjacent tissues. Furthermore, significantly higher expression of CCL21/CCR7 was found in CRLM than in HCC. In summary, the CCL20/CCR6 axis was elevated in HCC but not in CRLM, whereas the CCL21/CCR7 axis was elevated in CRLM but not in HCC.

中文翻译：

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趋化因子/趋化因子受体对在肝细胞癌和大肠肝转移中的诊断价值。

已经提出趋化因子及其受体在肿瘤进展和转移中起重要作用。为了研究它们在原发性和转移性恶性肝肿瘤进展中的作用及其预后，我们比较了CXCL12 / CXCR4，CCL20 / CCR6和CCL21 / CCR7在肝细胞癌（HCC）和大肠肝转移瘤（CRLM）中的表达谱。免疫组织化学分析了29例HCC和11例CRLM标本及邻近非癌组织中趋化因子/趋化因子受体对的表达水平，并确定了与临床病理变量和总生存期的相关性。HCC中的CCL20 / CCR6表达高于相邻的非癌性组织。HCC中CCR6的高表达与5年生存率负相关，并且是HCC患者总体生存的独立预后因素，而CRLM与邻近组织之间未观察到差异。此外，发现CRLM中的CCL21 / CCR7表达明显高于HCC。总之，在HCC中CCL20 / CCR6轴升高，而在CRLM中升高，而在CLM中CCL21 / CCR7轴升高，但在HCC中没有升高。