Elevated MPP6 expression correlates with an unfavorable prognosis, angiogenesis and immune evasion in hepatocellular carcinoma

作者：Qianqian Cheng, Wei Wang, Jing Liu, Zhenyu Lv, Wenbin Ji, Jinhui Yu, Wenting Zhang, Yan Yang · 发表于：Frontiers in Immunology · 年份：2023 · DOI：10.3389/fimmu.2023.1173848 · 被引用次数：23 · 研究领域：Ferroptosis and cancer prognosis、Ubiquitin and proteasome pathways、RNA modifications and cancer

Background Membrane palmitoylated proteins (MPPs) are engaged in various biological processes, such as cell adhesion and cell polarity. Dysregulated MPP members have different effects on hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development. However, the role of MPP6 in HCC has been unknown. Method HCC transcriptome and clinical data from different public databases were downloaded and analyzed, and the results were further validated by qRT−PCR, Western blotting and immunohistochemistry (IHC) using HCC cell lines and tissues. The association between MPP6 and prognosis, potential pathogenic mechanisms, angiogenesis, immune evasion, tumor mutation burden (TMB) and treatment response in HCC patients was analyzed by bioinformatics and IHC staining. Results MPP6 was significantly overexpressed in HCC, and its expression was related to T stage, pathologic stage, histologic grade and adverse prognosis in HCC patients. Gene set enrichment analysis revealed that differentially expressed genes were mainly enriched in the synthesis of genetic materials and the WNT signaling pathway. GEPIA database analysis and IHC staining suggested that MPP6 expression had a positive correlation with angiogenesis. Single-cell dataset analysis indicated that MPP6 was associated with features of the tumor microenvironment. Additional analyses discovered that MPP6 expression was inversely related to immune cell infiltration and was involved in tumor immune evasion. MPP6 expression was positively associated with TMB, ...