Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 22|pp 24882—24913

Prognostic and immune infiltration signatures of proteasome 26S subunit, non-ATPase (PSMD) family genes in breast cancer patients

Do Thi Minh Xuan¹, Chung-Che Wu^2,³, Tzu-Jen Kao⁴, Hoang Dang Khoa Ta^1,⁵, Gangga Anuraga^1,^5,⁶, Vivin Andriani⁷, Muhammad Athoillah⁶, Chung-Chieh Chiao^1,⁵, Yung-Fu Wu⁸, Kuen-Haur Lee^1,^5,^9,¹⁰, Chih-Yang Wang^1,⁵, Jian-Ying Chuang^4,^11,¹²

¹Graduate Institute of Cancer Biology and Drug Discovery, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
²Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, College of Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
³Division of Neurosurgery, Department of Surgery, Taipei Medical University Hospital, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
⁴The Ph.D. Program for Neural Regenerative Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
⁵Ph.D. Program for Cancer Molecular Biology and Drug Discovery, College of Medical Science and Technology, Taipei Medical University and Academia Sinica, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
⁶Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science and Technology, PGRI Adi Buana University, Surabaya 60234, East Java, Indonesia
⁷Department of Biological Science, Faculty of Science and Technology, Universitas PGRI Adi Buana, Surabaya 60234, East Java, Indonesia
⁸Department of Medical Research, Tri-Service General Hospital, School of Medicine, National Defense Medical Center, Taipei 11490, Taiwan
⁹Cancer Center, Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
¹⁰TMU Research Center of Cancer Translational Medicine, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan
¹¹Department of Biomedical Science and Environmental Biology, Kaohsiung Medical University, Kaohsiung 80708, Taiwan
¹²Cell Physiology and Molecular Image Research Center, Wan Fang Hospital, Taipei Medical University, Taipei 11031, Taiwan

* Equal contribution

Received: August 20, 2021Accepted: October 27, 2021Published: November 28, 2021

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203722

Copyright: © 2021 Xuan 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

The complexity of breast cancer includes many interacting biological processes that make it difficult to find appropriate therapeutic treatments. Therefore, identifying potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers is urgently needed. Previous studies demonstrated that 26S proteasome delta subunit, non-ATPase (PSMD) family members significantly contribute to the degradation of damaged, misfolded, abnormal, and foreign proteins. However, transcriptional expressions of PSMD family genes in breast cancer still remain largely unexplored. Consequently, we used a holistic bioinformatics approach to explore PSMD genes involved in breast cancer patients by integrating several high-throughput databases, including The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), cBioPortal, Oncomine, and Kaplan-Meier plotter. These data demonstrated that PSMD1, PSMD2, PSMD3, PSMD7, PSMD10, PSMD12, and PSMD14 were expressed at significantly higher levels in breast cancer tissue compared to normal tissues. Notably, the increased expressions of PSMD family genes were correlated with poor prognoses of breast cancer patients, which suggests their roles in tumorigenesis. Meanwhile, network and pathway analyses also indicated that PSMD family genes were positively correlated with ubiquinone metabolism, immune system, and cell-cycle regulatory pathways. Collectively, this study revealed that PSMD family members are potential prognostic biomarkers for breast cancer progression and possible promising clinical therapeutic targets.