Formin protein FMNL1 is a biomarker for tumor-infiltrating immune cells and associated with well immunotherapeutic response

Guomin Lu; Hui Wang; Rui Xu; Junying Xu; Fangmei An; Haoran Xu; He Nie; Jie Mei; Qiang Zhan; Qinglin Zhang

doi:10.7150/jca.86965

Formin protein FMNL1 is a biomarker for tumor-infiltrating immune cells and associated with well immunotherapeutic response

J Cancer. 2023 Sep 11;14(16):2978-2989. doi: 10.7150/jca.86965. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Guomin Lu¹, Hui Wang¹, Rui Xu², Junying Xu³, Fangmei An¹, Haoran Xu¹, He Nie¹, Jie Mei³, Qiang Zhan¹, Qinglin Zhang¹

Affiliations

¹ Departments of Gastroenterology, The Affiliated Wuxi People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214023, China.
² The First College of Clinical Medicine, Nanjing Medical University, Nanjing, Jiangsu 211166, China.
³ Departments of Oncology, The Affiliated Wuxi People's Hospital of Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi Medical Center, Nanjing Medical University, Wuxi, Jiangsu 214023, China.

Abstract

Background: Increased studies on the basis of bulk RNA-sequencing (RNA-seq) data of cancer identify numbers of immune-related genes which may play potential regulatory roles in the tumor microenvironment (TME) without in-depth validation. Methods: In the current study, the immunological correlation and cell subpopulation expression pattern of FMNL1 were analyzed using public data. In addition, the cell subpopulation expression pattern of FMNL1 was also deeply validated using single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) and multiplexed quantitative immunofluorescence (mQIF). Results: Bulk FMNL1 mRNA was related to better prognosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and was able to identify immuno-hot tumor in not only HCC but also multiple cancer types. Bulk FMNL1 mRNA also predicted the response to immunotherapy in multiple cancers. Further validation using scRNA-seq and mQIF revealed that FMNL1 was a biomarker for immune cells. Conclusions: FMNL1 is a biomarker for immune cells in not only hepatocellular carcinoma, but also multiple cancer types. Moreover, immune infiltration analysis using the bulk RNA-seq data would be further validated using scRNA-seq and/or mQIF to describe the cell subpopulation expression pattern in tumor tissues for more in-depth and appropriate understanding.

Keywords: FMNL1; bioinformatics; biomarker; cancer; mQIF.