Open Access

Ring finger protein 157 is a prognostic biomarker and is associated with immune infiltrates in human breast cancer

by XIN ZHU^1,2,#, BIN XIAO^3,#,*, WENWU ZHANG^3,4, XIAOYU SONG³, WEI GONG⁵, LINHAI LI^3,*, XINPING CHEN^1,2,*

1 School of Life Sciences, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China
2 Department of Medical Laboratory, Hainan Cancer Hospital, Affiliated Cancer Hospital of Hainan Medical University, Hainan Tropical Cancer Research Institute, Haikou, 570312, China
3 Department of Laboratory Medicine, The Sixth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Qingyuan People’s Hospital, Qingyuan, 511518, China
4 Graduate School, Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, Guangzhou, 510006, China
5 School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Hainan University, Haikou, 570228, China

* Corresponding Authors: BIN XIAO. Email: ; LINHAI LI. Email: ; XINPING CHEN. Email:
# These two authors equally contributed to this work

BIOCELL 2023, 47(10), 2265-2281. https://doi.org/10.32604/biocell.2023.029195

Received 06 February 2023; Accepted 24 May 2023; Issue published 08 November 2023

Abstract

Background: The protein encoded by ring finger protein 157 (RNF157) is known to function as an E3 ubiquitin ligase. However, whether the level of RNF157 expression in breast cancer correlates with prognosis and immune cell infiltration among breast cancer patients remains to be further explored. Methods: In this study, publicly available datasets were used for evaluating RNF157 expression in different tumors compared with normal samples. Several independent datasets were screened for investigating the relationship between RNF157 and breast cancer survival, different mutation profiles, and tumor immune cell infiltration. We conducted a pathway enrichment analysis to identify signaling pathways associated with RNF157. Results: Analysis of public and online databases revealed that RNF157 expression markedly decreased in breast cancer tissue samples compared to non-carcinoma counterparts. Consistently, immunohistochemistry assays also demonstrated this RNF157 down-regulation in breast cancer samples. RNF157 up-regulation could predict the improved survival of breast cancer cases. Further, different RNF157 expression level groups exhibited different mutational profiles. Pathway enrichment profiling of RNF157-related genes suggested its possible involvement in regulating breast cancer via the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data and genomic enrichment analysis showed that RNF157 downregulated several genes positively associated with the MAPK signaling pathway. We also explored RNF157 expression and immune cell infiltration in breast cancer and found that RNF157 mRNA levels were negatively related to non-T immune cell infiltration. Conclusion: According to our work, RNF157 may be a promising diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for breast cancer.

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