Abstract
BackgroundFurin is a calcium-dependent protease that processes various precursor proteins through diverse secretory pathways. The deregulation of FURIN correlated with the prognosis of patients in numerous diseases. However, the role of FURIN in human pan-cancer is still largely unknown.MethodsMultiple bioinformatic methods were employed to comprehensively analyze the correlation of FURIN expression with prognosis, mismatch repair (MMR), microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor mutational burden (TMB), DNA methylation, tumor immune infiltration, and common immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) from the public database, and aim to evaluate the potential prognostic value of FURIN across cancers.ResultsFURIN was aberrantly expressed and was strongly correlated with MMR, MSI, TMB, and DNA methylation in multiple types of cancer. Moreover, survival analysis across cancers revealed that FURIN expression was correlated with overall survival (OS) in four cancers, disease-specific survival (DSS) in five cancers, progression-free interval (PFI) in seven cancers, and disease-free interval (DFI) in two cancers. Also, FURIN expression was related to immune cell infiltration in 6 cancers and ImmuneScore/StromalScore in 10 cancers, respectively. In addition, FURIN expression also showed strong association between expression levels and immune checkpoint markers in three cancers.ConclusionFURIN can serve as a significant prognostic biomarker and correlate with tumor immunity in human pan-cancer.
Highlights
Furin, proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin family member 3, is a calcium-dependent protease that is ubiquitously expressed in vertebrates (Seidah et al, 1998)
Compared with FURIN expression in normal tissues, its expression levels were relatively higher in bladder urothelial carcinoma (BRCA), esophageal carcinoma (ESCA), head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC), lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD), stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD), and uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC)
Since the data of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) normal samples are far less than that of tumor samples in some types of cancer, we integrated the data of the TCGA database and the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) database to evaluate the differences in FURIN expression in different cancers
Summary
Proprotein convertase subtilisin/kexin family member 3, is a calcium-dependent protease that is ubiquitously expressed in vertebrates (Seidah et al, 1998). Furin and other PCs process a large number of precursor proteins, such as hormones, neuropeptides, growth factors and their receptors, bacterial toxins, and adhesion molecule, through. FURIN Across Human Cancers various secretory pathways (Seidah and Prat, 2012). As for cancers, several studies have found that FURIN is expressed in various cancers and sarcomas (Khatib et al, 2002; Coppola et al, 2008; Lee et al, 2016; Jaaks and Bernasconi, 2017). Furin promotes the process of IGF1, migration, and invasion in rhabdomyosarcoma (Jaaks et al, 2016). The role of furin in cancers, such as lung cancers and rhabdomyosarcoma, has been studied, its roles across the human cancer spectrum still remain largely unknown. Furin is a calcium-dependent protease that processes various precursor proteins through diverse secretory pathways. The role of FURIN in human pan-cancer is still largely unknown
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