Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 10 pp 4513—4529
The bioinformatics and experimental analysis of the novel roles of virus infection-associated gene CDC20 for prognosis and immune infiltration in hepatocellular carcinoma
- 1 Department of Pathology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
- 2 National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
- 3 Departments of Burn and Plastic, Ningxiang People’s Hospital, Hunan University of Chinese Medicine, Changsha 410600, Hunan, China
- 4 Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
Received: February 10, 2022 Accepted: May 10, 2022 Published: May 27, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204093How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Li 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
Infection virus including HBV and HCV has been well recognized as a major cause inducing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, molecular investigations into the HTLV-1 (Human T-lymphotropic virus type-1) and HCC have been rare. In this study, we integrated several public datasets of HCC patients and filtered seven genes including CDC20 as the HTLV-1 infection-related genes which were differentially expressed in HCC. CDC20 was chosen for further investigation based on its promising prognostic power. The expression profiles, prognostic assessment, association with clinicopathologic characteristics, prediction of correlated signal pathways, and the immune-modulating function of CDC20 were assessed. We found that CDC20 expression was significantly increased in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues and cell lines, and was correlated with histologic grade, pathologic stage, tumor status, and patient age. CDC20 exhibited prognostic value on overall survival and disease specific survival and was an independent prognostic factor. It was primarily involved in several signal pathways, especially the omega-hydroxylase P450 and epoxygenase P450 signal pathways. Moreover, CDC20 expression showed significant positive associations with the levels of several immune cells such as T helper 2 cells and follicular helper T cells, immunostimulators including TNFRSF18 and MICB, immunoinhibitors including KDR and PDCD1LG2, chemokines including XCL1 and CCL26, and chemokine receptors including CCR10 and CXCR3. This study for the first time delineated the correlation of CDC20 with HTLV-1 infection-associated HCC. The disorder of expression and function of CDC20 makes it a probable biomarker for better etiological classification, prognostic prediction, and precision medicine.