Objective: Cervical cancer is one of the leading fatal diseases in women, and the role of Apolipoprotein B mRNA editing enzyme catalytic subunit 3B (APOBEC3B) in cervical cancer is uncertain.
Methods: Four Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) mRNA microarray datasets were analyzed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between cervical cancer and normal cervical tissues. The results were validated using a The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-cervical cancer (CESC) dataset. Expression profiles and patients' clinical data were used to investigate the relationship between APOBEC3B expression and cervical cancer survival. APOBEC3B co-expressed genes were subjected to enrichment analyses, and correlations between APOBEC3B expression and immunologic infiltrates were investigated using Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER). We generated receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC) curves to evaluate the performance of APOBEC3B expression in predicting cervical cancer prognosis.
Results: Fourteen overlapping DEGs were obtained, and APOBEC3B was chosen as a candidate gene. TCGA data further confirmed that APOBEC3B was significantly increased in cervical cancer, relative to normal adjacent tissues, and this expression was associated with poor clinical outcome. Results from quantitative real time polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) and immunohistochemical staining of cervical carcinoma tissues supported these findings. Enrichment analysis showed that APOBEC3B co-expressed genes were mainly enriched in cell cycle, DNA replication and chromosomal region. Moreover, APOBEC3B expression was significantly associated with T stage, M stage, primary therapy outcome and poor clinical prognosis in cervical cancer. Similarly, APOBEC3B was closely correlated with gene markers of diverse immune cells. APOBEC3B expression was an independent indicator of cervical cancer prognosis, according to univariate Cox and ROC analyses.
Conclusion: High APOBEC3B expression is strongly related to a poor prognosis in cervical cancer patients.
Keywords: APOBEC3B; GEO; TCGA; bioinformatics analysis; cervical cancer.
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