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Research Paper|Volume 15, Issue 24|pp 14845—14863

A comprehensive analysis of the prognostic and immunotherapeutic characteristics of KIFC1 in pan-cancer and its role in the malignant phenotype of pancreatic cancer

Shihang Zhang1, Ouyang Qin1, Huanming Xu1, Shu Wu2, Wei Huang3, Hailiang Song1
  • 1Department of General Surgery, Dalang Hospital, Dongguan, Guangdong, PR China
  • 2Department of Hepatic-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, The Affiliated Dongguan Hospital Southern Medical University (Dongguan People’s Hospital), Dongguan, Guangdong, PR China
  • 3Department of Hepatic-Biliary-Pancreatic Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of Guizhou Medical University, Guiyang, PR China
Received: August 16, 2023Accepted: November 6, 2023Published: December 18, 2023
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205311

Copyright: © 2023 Zhang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Background: Kinesin family member C1 (KIFC1) is an essential member of the motor protein family, which is critically involved in various cellular events, such as mitosis, meiosis, and macromolecular transport, but also in carcinogenesis, malignant progression, and tumor recurrence.

Methods: The analysis determined the relationship between KIFC1 expression, prognosis significance, immune characteristics landscape, and genetic alterations in pan-cancer with the data extracted from web-based platforms and databases, including but not limited to UCSC, NCBI, GEPIA2, HPA, cBioPortal, SangerBox, UALCAN, GEO and TCGA. Additionally, the expression of KIFC1 in pancreatic cancer tumor tissues and adjacent normal tissues was evaluated through immunohistochemistry. In vitro Edu, colony formation, wound healing, and Transwell assay were done to elucidate the biological functions of KIFC1 in pancreatic cancer cells.

Results: The analysis revealed that KIFC1 is upregulated in most cancers, and its increased expression is significantly associated with reduced overall survival and disease-free survival in multiple cancer types. Additionally, strong correlations between KIFC1 expression and tumor immunotherapy were observed across various malignancies. Through univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses using TCGA data, KIFC1 was identified as an independent predictor of prognosis in pancreatic cancer cases. Furthermore, cellular experiments demonstrated that knockdown of KIFC1 resulted in the suppression of cell proliferation, migration, and invasive ability.

Conclusions: Our study indicated that KIFC1 harbors the potential to be a prognostic and immunotherapeutic biomarker of tumors, and it can have an impact on the metastasis and the cell cycle of pancreatic cancer cells.