Background: To explore new biomarkers for indicating the recurrence and prognosis in hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients after tumor resection, we investigated the expression and prognostic value of c-kit(CD117) in HBV-related HCC.
Materials and methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to estimate the expression of c-kit(CD117) and CD34 in the liver cancer tissues. The correlations between the expression of these biomarkers and the clinicopathologic characteristics were analyzed. 
Results: The positive rate of c-kit(CD117) expression in 206 HCC cases was 48.1%, and c-kit expression was significantly related with CD34-positive microvessel density. CD34-microvessel density numbers were much higher in c-kit(+) HCC tissues than in c-kit(-) HCC tissues (44.13±17.01 vs 26.87±13.16, P =0.003). The expression of c-kit was significantly higher in patients with Edmondson grade III–IV (P <0.001) and TNM stage III (P <0.001). Moreover, Kaplan–Meier survival analysis showed that c-kit (P <0.001) expression was correlated with reduced disease-free survival (DFS). Multivariate analysis identified c-kit as an independent poor prognostic factor of DFS in HCC patients (P <0.001).
Conclusion: Increased c-kit expression could be considered as an independent unfavorable prognostic factor for predicting DFS in HBV-related HCC patients after surgery. These results could be used to identify patients at a higher risk of early tumor recurrence and poor prognosis.
Keywords: c-kit, CD34, hepatocellular carcinoma, prognosis, immunohistochemistry