Ubiquitin Conjugating Enzyme E2C Correlates with Tumor Microenvironment and Impacts with Patient Prognosis: A Pan-Cancer Analysis

Abstract

Background: Increasing evidences indicated that tumor microenvironment played a crucial role in cancer initiation and progression. Ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme E2C(UBE2C) was differentially expressed in 33 cancer types. However, the immunological and prognostic roles ofUBE2C across 33 cancers were unclear. Methods: Differentially expressed genes(DEGs) of 29 cancer types were downloaded from GEPIA2 and 4 cancer types were excluded. Furthermore, the gene expression profiles, mutation data and survival data of 33 cancer types were obtained from UCSC Xena. Survival and prognostic analysis, clinical stage relevance, tumor mutational burden(TMB) and tumor microenvironment(TME) relevance analysis and Gene set enrichment analysis(GSEA) of DEGs in 33 cancer types were performed. Findings: UBE2C was identified as the only one DEG in 33 cancer types which was related to Overall survival(OS) in 13 cancer types, disease-specific survival(DSS) in 8 cancer types, disease-free survival(DFS) in 11 cancer types and progression-free survival(PFS) in 14 cancer types. In addition, the higher UBE2C expression level meant terminal clinical stage in 8 cancer types and the expression level of UBE2C was related to TMB in 20 cancer types. Finally, both immune relevance analysis and GSEA indicated that UBE2C played a vital role in immune response of many cancers. Interpretation:UBE2C was differentially expressed in 33 cancer types and related to the pathnogenesis and tumor microenvironment of many cancers, which might be a potential diagnostic and therapeutic biomarker. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81472536); the Science and Technology Planning Project of Guangdong Province (2017A020215181;2014A020212440); Project of Educational Commission of Guangdong Province of China (2018KTSCX026); the Scientific Research Planning Project of Southern Medical University (CX2018N016) and the Presidential Foundation of the Nanfang Hospital (2014027;2019Z030). Declaration of Interest: None Ethical Approval: The Nanfang Hospital ethics committee (AF/SC-09/03.2) approved this study.