细胞因子骨密度蛋白是肿瘤进展和癌症转移的介质。2006年，我们报告说（除了全长形式-a外），骨密度蛋白的切割变体（形式-b和-c）仅由转化细胞选择性地产生。截至2021年6月，有36篇PubMed索引的期刊文章研究了不同癌症患者的骨密度蛋白切割变体。我们采用我们先前开发的分类方法，对相关文献进行了元分析。 我们还使用TSVdb数据库评估相关条目，该数据库侧重于切割变体的表达，因此包括了额外的变体-4和-5。该分析涵盖了来自文献的15种肿瘤中的5886名患者和TSVdb的33种肿瘤中的10446名患者。与分类元分析相比，数据库更频繁地产生正面结果。两个来源在肺癌中升高的OPN-a，OPN-b和OPN-c以及在乳腺癌中升高的OPN-c与健康组织进行比较达成一致。特定的切割变体与各种癌症的等级，阶段或患者生存相关联。存在持续差异的情况，需要进一步调查以澄清骨密度蛋白切割变体的利用，以实现其诊断、预后和潜在的预测潜力。©2023年作者。

The cytokine Osteopontin is a mediator of tumor progression and cancer metastasis. In 2006, we reported that (in addition to the full-length form -a) splice variants of Osteopontin (forms -b and -c) are produced selectively by transformed cells. Through June 2021, 36 PubMed-indexed journal articles have studied Osteopontin splice variants in various cancer patients.Applying a categorical approach previously developed by us, here we conduct a meta-analysis of the pertinent literature. We supplement this with evaluation of the relevant entries in the TSVdb database, which focusses on splice variant expression, thus including the additional variants -4 and -5. The analysis covers 5886 patients across 15 tumors from the literature and 10,446 patients across 33 tumors from TSVdb.The database yields positive results more frequently than the categorical meta-analysis. The two sources are in agreement on the elevation of OPN-a, OPN-b, and OPN-c in lung cancer and the elevation of OPN-c in breast cancer as compared to healthy tissue. Specific splice variants are associated with grade, stage, or patient survival pertaining to various cancers.There are cases of persisting discrepancies, which require further investigation to clarify the Osteopontin splice variant utilization, so that their diagnostic, prognostic and potentially predictive potential can be brought to fruition.© 2023. The Author(s).