Research Paper Volume 16, Issue 10 pp 8898—8921
Comprehensive prognostic and immunological analysis of Cullin2 in pan-cancer and its identification in hepatocellular carcinoma
- 1 Department of Nuclear Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
- 2 Department of Thoracic Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
- 3 Jiangxi Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
- 4 Department of Genetic Medicine, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
- 5 Department of General Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nanchang University, Nanchang 330006, Jiangxi, China
- 6 Department of Pharmacology, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing 211166, Jiangsu, China
Received: November 17, 2023 Accepted: March 18, 2024 Published: May 22, 2024
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.205848How to Cite
Copyright: © 2024 Jia 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: As a member of the Cullin family, Cullin2 (CUL2) is involved in the development and spread of different types of cancers. However, the precise role of CUL2 in human cancer remains largely elusive.
Methods: In this study, various databases were applied to observe the CUL2 expression. Kaplan-Meier and Spearman correlation analyses were employed to investigate the potential links between CUL2 level, patient prognosis, and the infiltration of immune cells. In addition, the association between CUL2 and the efficacy of immunotherapy in an immunotherapy cohort was investigated. Moreover, the expression and distribution of CUL2 in cells were observed using the Human Protein Atlas (THPA) database. Finally, clinical tissue specimens and in vitro function assays were conducted to validate the expressions and effects of CUL2 on the biological functions in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells.
Results: While there are variations in CUL2 expression across different organs and cell types, it is notably upregulated in a majority of tumor tissues. In addition, CUL2 gene mutations are common in multiple cancers with low mutation rates and CUL2 is closely related to the prognosis of some cancer’s patients, some immune regulatory factors, TMB, MSI, MMR genes, and DNA methylation. Further, our results found that downregulating CUL2 inhibits the proliferation, and migration abilities.
Conclusions: The expression of CUL2 has an impact on the prognosis of various tumors, and this correlation is particularly noteworthy due to its significant association with the infiltration of immune cells within tumors. CUL2 was an oncogene contributing to the progression of HCC.