SPOCK1 and POSTN are valuable prognostic biomarkers and correlate with tumor immune infiltrates in colorectal cancer

作者：Caiqin Gan, Mengting Li, Yuanyuan Lu, Ganjing Peng, Wenjie Li, Haizhou Wang, Yanan Peng, Qian Hu, Wanhui Wei, Fan Wang, Lan Liu, Qiu Zhao · 发表于：BMC Gastroenterology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.1186/s12876-022-02621-2 · 被引用次数：42 · 研究领域：Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis、Bone and Dental Protein Studies、Immune cells in cancer

BACKGROUND: Immune cells and stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment play a vital role in the progression of colorectal cancer (CRC). The study aimed to screen valuable prognostic biomarkers in CRC based on stromal and immune scores. METHOD: The ESTIMATE algorithm was used to calculate the immune and stromal scores of CRC samples in TCGA. Then samples were divided into high and low score groups based on the median value of the scores. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) associated with immune and stromal scores were screened. WGCNA and univariate COX regression analysis were performed to further identify key prognostic genes. Analysis of scRNA-seq for CRC was used for verifying the main source of the key genes. The prognostic value of they was validated based on The Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis and GSE17536 dataset. TIMER and CIBERSORT algorithms were applied to analyze the correlations among key genes and tumor-infiltrating immune cells. Several pairs of colon cancer tissue were used to be proven. RESULT: 1314 upregulated and 4 downregulated genes were identified, which were significantly enriched in immune-related biological processes and pathways. Among these DEGs, SPOCK1 and POSTN were identified as key prognostic genes and mainly expressed in cancer-associated fibroblasts for CRC. High expression of SPCOK1 and POSTN was associated with advanced clinical stage, T stage, N stage, and poor prognosis of CRC. The results from CIBERSORT and TIMER reveal...