Pan-Cancer Identification of Prognostic-Associated Metabolic Pathways

Wenbo Chen; Xin Chen; Zhenyu Zhao; Menglu Li; Shuang Dong; Sheng Hu; Xiaoyu Li; Mingqian Feng; Ke Chen; Shan Zhong; Chunjiang He

doi:10.3390/biology12081129

Pan-Cancer Identification of Prognostic-Associated Metabolic Pathways

Biology (Basel). 2023 Aug 14;12(8):1129. doi: 10.3390/biology12081129.

Authors

Wenbo Chen¹, Xin Chen^{2

3}, Zhenyu Zhao⁴, Menglu Li⁵, Shuang Dong⁶, Sheng Hu⁶, Xiaoyu Li⁶, Mingqian Feng^{2

3}, Ke Chen⁴, Shan Zhong¹, Chunjiang He^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ School of Basic Medical Sciences, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430071, China.
² College of Biomedicine and Health, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
³ College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
⁴ Department of Urology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430070, China.
⁵ College of Informatics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.
⁶ Department of Oncology, Hubei Cancer Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430079, China.

Abstract

Metabolic dysregulation has been reported involving in the clinical outcomes of multiple cancers. However, systematical identification of the impact of metabolic pathways on cancer prognosis is still lacking. Here, we performed a pan-cancer analysis of popular metabolic checkpoint genes and pathways with cancer prognosis by integrating information of clinical survival with gene expression and pathway activity in multiple cancer patients. By discarding the effects of age and sex, we revealed extensive and significant associations between the survival of cancer patients and the expression of metabolic checkpoint genes, as well as the activities of three primary metabolic pathways: amino acid metabolism, carbohydrate metabolism, lipid metabolism, and eight nonprimary metabolic pathways. Among multiple cancers, we found the survival of kidney renal clear cell carcinoma and low-grade glioma exhibit high metabolic dependence. Our work systematically assesses the impact of metabolic checkpoint genes and pathways on cancer prognosis, providing clues for further study of cancer diagnosis and therapy.

Keywords: cancer transcriptome; metabolic pathways; prognosis.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by National Natural Science Foundation of China (82170170) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2662022SYYJ001). The authors thank Huazhong Agricultural University for its financial support for this research.