Comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of PTGES3 and its prognostic role in hepatocellular carcinoma

Han Wang; Peng Sun; Ruoyu Yao; Wenrui Zhang; Xiaoshuang Zhou; Jia Yao; Kun He

doi:10.3389/fonc.2023.1158490

Comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of PTGES3 and its prognostic role in hepatocellular carcinoma

Front Oncol. 2023 May 18:13:1158490. doi: 10.3389/fonc.2023.1158490. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Han Wang¹, Peng Sun², Ruoyu Yao¹, Wenrui Zhang¹, Xiaoshuang Zhou³, Jia Yao¹, Kun He⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Gastroenterology, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Tongji Shanxi, Hospital, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.
² Department of Hepatobilary and Pancreatic Surgery, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong, China.
³ Department of Nephrology, The Affiliated People's Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.
⁴ Department of Emergency Surgery, Shanxi Bethune Hospital, Shanxi Academy of Medical Sciences, Tongji Shanxi Hospital, Third Hospital of Shanxi Medical University, Taiyuan, China.

Abstract

Introduction: PTGES3, also known as p23, is a molecule chaperone of Hsp90 that is involved in the pathogenesis of malignant tumors. Increasing studies have shown that PTGES3 plays a nonnegligible role in tumor development. However, analysis of PTGES3 in pan-cancer has not been performed yet.

Methods: We explored the role of PTGES3 in 33 types of tumors and depicted the potentialimmune-related pathways among them. Using multiple databases includingTCGA, LinkedOmics, GDSC, and TIMER, we made a comprehensive analysis to explore whether there was an interaction between PTGES3 and prognosis, DNA methylation, copy number variation (CNV), tumor mutational burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), and tumor immune microenvironment (TME).

Results: Our study revealed that PTGES3 expression level was upregulated in most cancers. PTGES3 was also associated with a positive or negative prognosis in a variety of cancers, which was mainly associated with DNA methylation, CNV, MSI, TMB, andmismatch repair-related genes. High PTGES3 expression was related to the infiltration of Th2 subsets of CD4+ T cells and immune checkpoint-related genes in most cancers, especially in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Enrichment analysis demonstrated that PTGES3 was involved in cellular processes including DNA replication and spliceosome. The relationship between PTGES3 expression and HCC progression was verified at the protein level through immune histochemical analysis.

Conclusions: Our research demonstrated theprognostic predictive value of PTGES3 in a wide range of cancers, which was alsoassociated with the process of tumor immune infiltration. As a result, it suggestedthat PTGES3 was a valuable prognostic biomarker in HCC treatment.

Keywords: PTGES3; hepatocellar carcinoma; immune infiltration; pan-cancer; prognosis.

Grants and funding

The present study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81700562), the Shanxi Province 136 Revitalization Medical Project (General Surgery Department (2021YZ13), and the Shanxi Provincial Guiding Science and Technology Special Project (2021XM42). This study obtained grants from the Key Research and Development (R&D) Projects of Shanxi Province (201803D31151) and the Excellent Youth Cultivation Project of Shanxi Province (202103021222013).