肝细胞癌（HCC）是全球发生率排名第六的癌症，也是癌症死亡的第三大原因。面对日益增长的HCC患者人口，急需寻找出良好的诊断和预后标志物以探索新的治疗靶点。已报道磷酸三酯酶相关（PTER）蛋白与血清门冬氨酸转氨酶（AST）和丙氨酸转氨酶（ALT）有关。本研究旨在调查PTER蛋白在HCC患者中的表达情况，并研究PTER蛋白表达与HCC临床病理特征的关联。我们通过对配对的癌旁和肝肿瘤组织以及HCC组织微阵列（TMA）进行Western blot分析和免疫组化（IHC），检测PTER蛋白的表达情况。通过单变量和多变量分析，分析PTER蛋白与预后因素的相关性。我们发现PTER蛋白在HCC肿瘤中显著上调。我们的数据显示高PTER蛋白表达与HCC的进展期、血管侵犯、复发以及较短的总生存期（OS）和无疾病生存期（DFS）有关。此外，多变量分析显示，PTER蛋白是HCC患者OS（P=0.004）和DFS（P=0.013）的独立预测因子。同时，高PTER蛋白表达的患者预后较差。PTER蛋白在HCC组织中的表达上调，可能成为HCC患者的潜在预后预测指标。

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth incidence of cancer and the third leading cause of cancer mortality in the world. Facing the ever-increasing population of HCC patients, there is still an urgent need to find good diagnostic and prognostic markers to explore new therapeutic targets. Phosphotriesterase-related (PTER) protein, an expressed protein in the liver and injured or ploycystic kidneys, was reported to be correlated with serum aspartate aminotransferase (AST) and alanine transaminase (ALT). Our study aimed to investigate the expression of PTER protein in HCC patients and the association between PTER protein expression with clinicopathological features of HCC.Western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were performed in paired para-tumor and liver tumor tissues and HCC tissue microarray (TMA) to detect PTER protein expression. Correlation between PTER protein and prognostic factors were analyzed through univariate and multivariate analysis.We identified that PTER protein was significantly up-regulated in HCC tumors. Our data revealed that high PTER protein expression was associated with aggressive clinicopathological features of HCC, such as advanced tumor staging, vascular invasion, recurrence, and shorter overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) time. Besides, in multivariate analyses, PTER protein was an independent predictor for OS (P=0.004) and DFS (P=0.013) for HCC patients. Meanwhile, the prognosis of patients with high PTER protein is much worse than those with low PTER protein expression.PTER protein expression is raised in HCC tissues and may be a potential prognostic predictor for HCC patients.