Research Paper Volume 10, Issue 11 pp 3450—3473

Transcriptional expressions of Chromobox 1/2/3/6/8 as independent indicators for survivals in hepatocellular carcinoma patients

Gang Ning1, , Yan-Lin Huang1,2, , Li-Min Zhen1, , Wen-Xiong Xu1, , Qian Jiao1, , Fang-Ji Yang1, , Li-Na Wu1, , Yong-Yuan Zheng1, , Jie Song1, , Yen-Sheng Wang3, , Chan Xie1, , Liang Peng1, ,

  • 1 Department of Infectious Diseases, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China
  • 2 Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Liver Disease Research, the Third Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
  • 3 Department of Environmental Health Science, Yale School of Public Health, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, USA
* Equal contribution

Received: July 14, 2018       Accepted: November 15, 2018       Published: November 27, 2018      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.101658
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2018 Ning et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Chromobox (CBX) proteins are important components of epigenetic regulation complexes known to play key roles in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Little is known about the function of distinct CBXs in HCC. To address this issue, the study investigated the roles of CBXs in the prognosis of HCC using ONCOMINE, UALCAN, Human Protein Atlas, Kaplan-Meier Plotter, c-BioPortal databases. Over expressions of 8 CBXs members were found to be significantly associated with clinical cancer stages and pathological tumor grades in HCC patients. Besides, higher mRNA expressions of CBX1/2/3/6/8 were found to be significantly associated with shorter overall survival (OS) in HCC patients, while higher mRNA expression of CBX7 was associated with favorable OS. Multivariate analysis also showed that high mRNA expressions of CBX1/2/3/6/8 were independent prognostic factors for shorter OS of HCC patients. Moreover, high mutation rate of CBXs (51%) was also observed in HCC patients, and genetic alteration in CBXs was associated with shorter OS and disease-free survival (DFS) in HCC patients. Taken together, these results indicated that CBX1/2/3/6/8 could be prognostic biomarkers for survivals of HCC patients.

Abbreviations

HCC: hepatocellular carcinoma; SNP: small nucleotide polymorphism; PcG: polycomb group; CBXs: chromobox; TCGA: cancer genome atlas; GO: gene ontology; KEGG: Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes; BP: biological processes; CC: cellular components; MF: molecular functions; OS: over survival; DFS: disease free survival; CPPC: castration-resistant prostate cancer; BC: breast cancers; PCa: prostate cancer; LUAD: lung adenocarcinoma; nSCLC: non-small cell lung cancer; TSCC: tongue squamous cell carcinoma; TSLCs: tumor stem-like cells.