High expression of HILPDA is an adverse prognostic prognostic factor in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) is a malignant tumor arising from hepatocytes or intrahepatic bile duct epithelial cells, which is one of the common malignancies worldwide. Better identification of liver cancer biomarkers has become one of the current challenges. Although hypoxia inducible lipid droplet associated (HILPDA) has been reported to be associated with tumor progression in a variety of human solid cancers, it has rarely been reported in the field of hepatocellular carcinoma; therefore, in this paper, RNA sequencing data from TCGA were used to analyze the expression of HILPDA and differentially expressed genes (DEGs). In addition, functional enrichment analysis of HILPDA-associated DEGs was performed by GO/KEGG, GSEA, immune cell infiltration analysis and protein-protein interaction network. The clinical significance of HILPDA in LIHC was calculated by Kaplan-Meier Cox regression and prognostic nomogram models. R package was used to analyze the combined studies. Thus, HILPDA was highly expressed in various malignancies, including LIHC, compared with normal samples, and high HILPDA expression was associated with poor prognosis (P < .05). Cox regression analysis showed high HILPDA to be an independent prognostic factor; age and cytogenetic risk were included in the nomogram prognostic model. A total of 1294 DEGs were identified between the high and low expression groups, of which 1169 had upregulated gene expression and 125 had downregulated gene expression. Overall, high expression of HILPDA is a potential biomarker for poor outcome in LIHC.