Prognostic and immune-related value of STK17B in skin cutaneous melanoma

PLoS One. 2022 Feb 16;17(2):e0263311. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0263311. eCollection 2022.

Abstract

Skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM) is a common cancer of which mortality is increasing continuously. Our study conducted a series of analyses on the clinical significance of Serine/threonine kinase 17B (STK17B) in SKCM to provide a new biomarker for diagnosis and treatment. The RNA-sequence data were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Genotype-Tissue Expression databases. The data of 468 SKCM patients were divided into STK17B high- and low-expression groups and analyzed by Bioconductor package to identify the differential expressed genes. The R package of "clusterProfiler" was used for Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, and Gene-Set Enrichment Analysis analyses. A protein-protein interaction network and immune infiltration landscape were respectively constructed via STRING database and ssGSEA. STK17B had lower expression in SKCM than normal tissues. Besides, STK17B expression was significantly related to some clinicopathological characteristics in SKCM patients including T stage, Breslow depth, radiation therapy, melanoma Clark level, and pathologic stage. The Kaplan-Meier curve analyses revealed that the low expression of STK17B was correlated with poor overall survival and disease-specific survival. We constructed nomograms to predict the 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival of SKCM patients. The function enrichment analyses showed STK17B-related differential expressed genes were enriched in cellular differentiation and immune-related progress. STK17B expression level were positively correlated with infiltrating level of immune cells. In this study, we found that STK17B, which played an important role in immune infiltration, could be a new biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis in SKCM patients.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Aged
  • Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins / genetics*
  • Biomarkers, Tumor / genetics*
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Databases, Genetic
  • Female
  • Follow-Up Studies
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Melanoma / genetics
  • Melanoma / immunology
  • Melanoma / pathology*
  • Melanoma / radiotherapy
  • Melanoma, Cutaneous Malignant
  • Middle Aged
  • Nomograms*
  • Prognosis
  • Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases / genetics*
  • Skin Neoplasms / genetics
  • Skin Neoplasms / immunology
  • Skin Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Skin Neoplasms / radiotherapy
  • Survival Rate
  • Tumor Microenvironment*

Substances

  • Apoptosis Regulatory Proteins
  • Biomarkers, Tumor
  • Protein Serine-Threonine Kinases
  • STK17B protein, human

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81973603), Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning Province (No.2019-MS-094), Authors declared that the funding source did not participate in the study design; collection, analyses and interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; and in the decision to submit the manuscript for publication.