Role of DTL in Hepatocellular Carcinoma and Its Impact on the Tumor Microenvironment

作者：Zuyin Li, Rangrang Wang, Chen Qiu, Can Cao, Jianming Zhang, Jun Ge, Yuanping Shi · 发表于：Frontiers in Immunology · 年份：2022 · DOI：10.3389/fimmu.2022.834606 · 被引用次数：32 · 研究领域：Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis、Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers、Kruppel-like factors research

Background The crucial role of DTL has been previously implicated in genomic stability; however, its prognostic value and its relation with tumor immunity in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain to be further explored. Methods Transcriptional and mutational datasets as well as clinical information were retrieved from the GEO, ICGC, and TCGA databases. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained from the comparison of DTL high and DTL low expression groups of the TCGA-HCC cohort. Those genes were under KEGG and gene ontology (GO) analyses to decipher the influence of the DTL gene on the biological behavior of HCC tumor cells. The survival status and mutational characteristics of patients according to DTL levels were depicted and analyzed. The DTL overexpression in HCC and its impact on prognosis were further confirmed by a cohort of 114 HCC patients (validation cohort). The TIMER, GEPIA, and TISIDB databases were adopted to investigate the potential relations between DTL levels and the status of immune cells, as well as immune cell infiltrations. Results The DTL gene is overexpressed in tumor tissues compared with distant non-malignant liver tissues, and DTL overexpression in HCC would enhance the HCC cells in the activities of cell cycle and division. HCC patients with high DTL expression have unfavorable clinical outcomes and harbor more somatic mutations than those with low DTL expression, and multivariate analysis also revealed that DTL overexpression could act as...