Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 9 pp 4014—4035
Prognostic value and immune characteristics of RUNX gene family in human cancers: a pan-cancer analysis
- 1 Department of Ophthalmology, Eye, Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital of Fudan University, Shanghai 200000, Shanghai, China
- 2 Laboratory of Myopia, NHC Key Laboratory of Myopia, Fudan University, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Shanghai 200000, Shanghai, China
- 3 Shanghai Key Laboratory of Visual Impairment and Restoration, Fudan University, Shanghai 200000, Shanghai, China
- 4 Department of Stomatology, The Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410011, Hunan, China
- 5 Department of Gastroenterology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xinxiang Medical University, Weihui 453100, Henan, China
Received: November 22, 2021 Accepted: March 23, 2022 Published: May 6, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204065How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Zhao 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
Background: Runt-related transcription factors (RUNX) are involved in numerous fundamental biological processes and play crucial parts in tumorigenesis and metastasis both directly and indirectly. However, the pan-cancer evidence of the RUNX gene family is not available.
Methods: In this study, we analyzed the potential association between RUNX gene family expression and patient’s prognosis, immune cell infiltration, drug response, and genetic mutation data across different types of tumors using based on The Cancer Genome Atlas, Gene Expression Omnibus, and Oncomine database.
Results: The results showed that the expression of the RUNX gene family varied among different cancer types, revealing its heterogeneity in cancers and that expression of RUNX2 was lower than that of RUNX1 and RUNX3 across all cancer types. RUNX gene family gene expression was related to prognosis in several cancers. Furthermore, our study revealed a clear association between RUNX gene family expression and ESTIMATE score, RNA stemness, and DNA stemness scores. Compared with RUNX1 and RUNX2, RUNX3 showed relatively low levels of genetic alterations. RUNX gene family genes had clear associations with immune infiltrate subtypes, and their expression was positively related to immune checkpoint genes and drug sensitivity in most cases. Two immunotherapy cohorts confirm that the expression of RUNX was correlated with the clinical response of immunotherapy.
Conclusions: These findings will help to elucidate the potential oncogenic roles of RUNX gene family genes in different types of cancer and it can function as a prognostic marker in various malignant tumors.