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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 1|pp 912—930

Prognostic potential of PRPF3 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Yinlan Liu1, Yuhan Yang1, Yan Luo1, Juan Wang2, Xiangyun Lu3, Zongxing Yang4, Jin Yang1
  • 1Department of Translational Medicine Center, Affiliated Hospital of Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310015, P.R. China
  • 2Department of Clinical Laboratory, Tongde Hospital of Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310012, P.R. China
  • 3State Key Laboratory for Diagnosis and Treatment of Infectious Diseases, National Clinical Research Center for Infectious Diseases, The First Affiliated Hospital, College of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310003, P.R. China
  • 4The Second Department of Infectious Disease, Xixi Hospital of Hangzhou, The Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang Chinese Medical University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang 310023, P.R. China
* Equal contribution
Received: September 17, 2019Accepted: December 24, 2019Published: January 11, 2020
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102665

Copyright: © 2020 Liu 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

pre-mRNA processing factor 3 (PRPF3) is an RNA binding protein in a core component of the exon junction complex. Abnormal PRPF3 expression is potentially associated with carcinogenesis. However, the biological role of PRPF3 in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains to be determined. We analyzed PRPF3 expression via multiple gene expression databases and identified its genetic alterations and functional networks using cBioPortal. Co-expressed genes with PRPF3 and its regulators were identified using LinkedOmics. The correlations between PRPF3 and cancer immune infiltrates were investigated via Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER). PRPF3 was found up-regulated with amplification in tumor tissues in multiple HCC cohorts. High PRPF3 expression was associated with poorer overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Functional network analysis suggested that PRPF3 regulates spliceosome, DNA replication, and cell cycle signaling via pathways involving several cancer-related kinases and E2F family. Notably, PRPF3 expression was positively correlated with infiltrating levels of CD4+ T and CD8+ T cells, macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells. PRPF3 expression showed strong correlations with diverse immune marker sets in HCC. These findings suggest that PRPF3 is correlated with prognosis and immune infiltrating in HCC, laying a foundation for further study of the immune regulatory role of PRPF3 in HCC.