Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 5 pp 7499—7516

BDKRB2 is a novel EMT-related biomarker and predicts poor survival in glioma

Ying Yang1, , Jin Wang2, , Fei Shi2, , Aijun Shan2, , Shihai Xu2, , Wen Lv2, ,

  • 1 Department of Pediatrics, Futian Women and Children Health Institute, Shenzhen 518045, China
  • 2 Department of Emergency, Shenzhen People’s Hospital (The Second Clinical Medical College, Jinan University, The First Affiliated Hospital, Southern University of Science and Technology), Shenzhen 518020, China

Received: July 1, 2020       Accepted: December 18, 2020       Published: March 3, 2021      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202614
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2021 Yang 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

Bradykinin receptor B2 (BDKRB2) has been reported as an oncogene in several malignancies. In glioma, the role of BDKRB2 remains unknown. This study aimed at investigating its clinical significance and biological function in glioma at the transcriptional level. We selected 301 glioma patients with microarray data from CGGA database and 697 with RNAseq data from TCGA database. Transcriptome and clinical data of 998 samples were analyzed. Statistical analysis and figure generating were performed with R language. BDKRB2 expression showed a positive correlation with the WHO grade of glioma. BDKRB2 was increased in IDH wildtype and mesenchymal subtype of glioma. Gene ontology analysis demonstrated that BDKRB2 was profoundly associated with extracellular matrix organization in glioma. GSEA analysis revealed that BDKRB2 was particularly correlated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). GSVA analysis showed that BDKRB2 was significantly paralleled with several EMT signaling pathways, including PI3K/AKT, hypoxia, and TGF-β. Moreover, BDKRB2 expression was significantly correlated with key biomarkers of EMT, especially with N-cadherin, snail, slug, vimentin, TWIST1, and TWIST2. Finally, higher BDKRB2 indicated significantly shorter survival for glioma patients. In conclusion, BDKRB2 was associated with more aggressive phenotypes of gliomas. Furthermore, BDKRB2 was involved in the EMT process and could serve as an independent prognosticator in glioma.

Abbreviations

BDKRB2: Bradykinin receptor B2; EMT: epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition; GBM: glioblastoma; GO: gene ontology; GSEA: gene sets enrichment analysis; GSVA: gene sets variation analysis; CGGA: Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas; TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas.