SERPINE1 associated with remodeling of the tumor microenvironment in colon cancer progression: a novel therapeutic target

BMC Cancer

Shaokun Wang¹  Li Pang¹  Zuolong Liu¹  Xiangwei Meng² 

[1] Department of Emergency, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China;Department of Gastrointestinal Medicine, The First Hospital of Jilin University, No. 71 Xinmin Road, Changchun, China;

关键词: Colon cancer;    SERPINE1;    Tumor microenvironment;    Tumor-infiltrating immune cells;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12885-021-08536-7

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe change of immune cell infiltration essentially influences the process of colorectal cancer development. The infiltration of immune cells can be regulated by a variety of genes. Thus, modeling the immune microenvironment of colorectal cancer by analyzing the genes involved can be more conducive to the in-depth understanding of carcinogenesis and the progression thereof.MethodsIn this study, the number of stromal and immune cells in malignant tumor tissues were first estimated by using expression data (ESTIMATE) and cell-type identification with relative subsets of known RNA transcripts (CIBERSORT) to calculate the proportion of infiltrating immune cell and stromal components of colon cancer samples from the Cancer Genome Atlas database. Then the relationship between the TMN Classification and prognosis of malignant tumors was evaluated.ResultsBy investigating differentially expressed genes using COX regression and protein-protein interaction network (PPI), the candidate hub gene serine protease inhibitor family E member 1 (SERPINE1) was found to be associated with immune cell infiltration. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) further projected the potential pathways with elevated SERPINE1 expression to carcinogenesis and immunity. CIBERSORT was subsequently utilized to investigate the relationship between the expression differences of SERPINE1 and immune cell infiltration and to identify eight immune cells associated with SERPINE1 expression.ConclusionWe found that SERPINE1 plays a role in the remodeling of the colon cancer microenvironment and the infiltration of immune cells.

【 授权许可】

CC BY