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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 16|pp 20438—20467

Ceruloplasmin correlates with immune infiltration and serves as a prognostic biomarker in breast cancer

Fei Chen1, Bihui Han1, Yanxiu Meng1, Yu Han1, Bing Liu1, Bo Zhang1, Yanzhong Chang1, Pengxiu Cao1, Yumei Fan1, Ke Tan1
  • 1Key Laboratory of Animal Physiology, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology of Hebei Province, College of Life Sciences, Hebei Normal University, Shijiazhuang 050024, Hebei, China
* Equal contribution
Received: January 30, 2021Accepted: August 2, 2021Published: August 19, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203427

Copyright: © 2021 Chen 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

Breast-invasive carcinoma (BRCA) is the most frequent and malignant tumor in females. Ceruloplasmin (CP) is a multifunctional molecule involved in iron metabolism, but its expression profile, prognostic potential and relationship with immune cell infiltration in BRCA are unknown. Ceruloplasmin mRNA and protein expression was significantly decreased in BRCA patients according to the Oncomine, UALCAN, GEPIA and TCGA databases. Ceruloplasmin expression was strongly correlated with various clinicopathological features of BRCA patients. BRCA patients with high ceruloplasmin expression exhibited shorter survival times than those with low ceruloplasmin expression based on the Kaplan-Meier plotter and PrognoScan databases. GO and KEGG analyses and GSEA revealed a strong correlation between ceruloplasmin and various immune-related pathways. Ceruloplasmin expression was significantly associated with the infiltration of immune cells into tumor sites by analyzing the TIMER and CIBERSORT. Additionally, ceruloplasmin was positively correlated with immune checkpoints in BRCA. These findings suggest that low ceruloplasmin expression correlates with a favorable prognosis and tumor immune cell infiltration in BRCA patients. Ceruloplasmin may serve as a therapeutic target and predict the efficacy of immunotherapy for BRCA.