Prognostic value of CLIC3 mRNA overexpression in bladder cancer

Mei Chen; Shufang Zhang; Xiaohong Wen; Hui Cao; Yuanhui Gao

doi:10.7717/peerj.8348

Prognostic value of CLIC3 mRNA overexpression in bladder cancer

PeerJ. 2020 Jan 6:8:e8348. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8348. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Mei Chen¹, Shufang Zhang¹, Xiaohong Wen¹, Hui Cao¹, Yuanhui Gao¹

Affiliation

¹ Central Laboratory, Affiliated Haikou Hospital of Xiangya Medical College, Central South University, Haikou, Hainan, China.

Abstract

Background: Human intracellular chloride channel 3 (CLIC3) is involved in the development of various cancers, but the expression and prognostic value of CLIC3 mRNA in bladder cancer (BC) remain unclear.

Methods: The gene expression data and clinical information of CLIC3 were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database and verified in the Oncomine and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The expression of CLIC3 mRNA in BC tissues and adjacent normal tissues was detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). The Kaplan-Meier method was used to analyze the relationship between the expression of CLIC3 mRNA and the prognosis of BC. Cox univariate and multivariate analyses were performed on the overall survival and tumor-specific survival of BC patients. The genes coexpressed with CLIC3 were analyzed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG). CLIC3-related signal transduction pathways in BC were explored with gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA).

Results: The expression of CLIC3 mRNA in BC tissues was higher than that in normal tissues (P < 0.01). High CLIC3 mRNA expression was associated with age (P = 0.021) and grade (P = 0.045) in BC patients. High CLIC3 mRNA expression predicted a poor prognosis in BC patients (P < 0.05). Cox univariate and multivariate analyses showed that high CLIC3 mRNA expression was associated with tumor-specific survival in BC patients (P < 0.05). Functional enrichment analyses indicated that CLIC3 may be significantly associated with the cell cycle, focal adhesion, the extracellular matrix (ECM) receptor interaction and the P53 signaling pathway.

Conclusions: CLIC3 mRNA is highly expressed in BC, and its high expression is related to the adverse clinicopathological factors and prognosis of BC patients. CLIC3 can be used as a biomarker for the prognosis of BC patients.

Keywords: Bladder cancer; CLIC3; Expression; GSEA; Prognosis.

Grants and funding

This study was supported by Hainan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2017CXTD010), the National Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81760465 and 81460450), the Finance science and technology project of Hainan province (Grant No. ZDYF2019163 and ZDKJ2017007). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.