Association between prognosis and SEMA4D/Plexin-B1 expression in various malignancies: A meta-analysis.

INTRODUCTION: SEMA4D and its high affinity receptor Plexin-B1 showed a promising prognosis prediction for carcinoma patients in recent studies, we performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic role of them in various malignancies.

METHODS: A systematic literature search was performed in PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and CNKI from inception till July 2017. Eligible studies were identified by different reviewers. Hazard ratios (HRs)/related ratios (RRs) and their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were extracted to investigate the relevance between malignancies prognosis and SEMA4D/Plexin-B1.

RESULTS: Around 2638 patients from 14 studies were included in this meta-analysis. High expression of SEMA4D was significantly associated with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival/progression-free survival/recurrence-free survival (DFS/PFS/RFS) in tumors (respectively, HRos = 2.05, 95%CI: 1.68-2.50, P < .001; HRdfs/pfs/rfs = 1.59, 95%CI = 1.27-1.98, P < .001). However, the relationship between SEMA4D expression and prognosis of breast cancer patients was failed to find (HR = 0.76, 95%CI = 0.32-1.82, P = .539). Plexin-B1 level showed a significant positive correlation both with OS and DFS of Caucasian breast cancer patients (respectively, HRos = 0.56, 95%CI: 0.39-0.79, P = .001; HRdfs = 0.68, 95%CI = 0.51-0.90, P = .008) CONCLUSIONS:: SEMA4D could be a prospective biomarker for prognostic prediction of various malignancies except breast cancer. For Caucasian breast cancer patients, SEMA4D's high affinity receptor Plexin-B1 showed a significant positive correlation with survival.