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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 8|pp 11096—11119

Pan-cancer analysis identifies ITIH1 as a novel prognostic indicator for hepatocellular carcinoma

Qing-hua Chang1, Ting Mao2, Yan Tao1, Tao Dong1, Xuan-xuan Tang1, Guo-hong Ge3, Zi-jun Xu4
  • 1Department of Internal Medicine, The Affiliated Third Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
  • 2Department of Radiology, The Affiliated Third Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
  • 3Department of Hepatology, The Affiliated Third Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
  • 4Laboratory Center, Affiliated People’s Hospital of Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
* Equal contribution
Received: November 2, 2020Accepted: January 22, 2021Published: March 21, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202765

Copyright: © 2021 Chang 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

Although a previous pan-cancer study has reported the expression patterns of ITIHs in various tumors, their analyses have been restricted to limited cancer types. We thus comprehensively analyzed the expression profiles and clinical significances of ITIHs in a broader spectrum of cancers from TCGA. Our results showed that ITIHs were primarily down-regulated in tested cancers. The ITIH members were associated with either survival advantage or disadvantage, depending on the cancer type tested and the genes queried. Importantly, we for the first time demonstrated that ITIH1 had substantially decreased expression in liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) compared with corresponding normal tissue, and its down-regulation adversely impacted patient outcome. Moreover, ITIH1 expression was consistently declining during the progression of LIHC. Further analysis revealed that ITIH1 may be involved in cellular metabolic processes. Our findings established ITIH1 as a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for LIHC, which awaits future experimental validation.