Open Access

ARTICLE

A pan-cancer analysis identifies SOAT1 as an immunological and prognostic biomarker

by YANGQING HUANG^1,2, XINLAN ZHOU¹, XIUFEN LI¹, DAN HUANG¹, ZHONG FANG^3,*, RONGRONG DING^1,*

1 Department of Hepatobiliary Medicine, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
2 Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Fudan University, Shanghai, China
3 Liver Cancer Institute of Zhongshan Hospital and Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Cancer Invasion (Ministry of Education), School of Basic Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Shanghai, China

* Corresponding Authors: ZHONG FANG. Email: ; RONGRONG DING. Email:

Oncology Research 2023, 31(2), 193-205. https://doi.org/10.32604/or.2023.027112

Received 14 October 2022; Accepted 17 February 2023; Issue published 10 April 2023

Abstract

Sterol o-acyltransferase1 (SOAT1) is an enzyme that regulates lipid metabolism. Nevertheless, the predictive value of SOAT1 regarding immune responses in cancer is not fully understood. Herein, we aimed to expound the predictive value and the potential biological functions of SOAT1 in pan-cancer. Raw data related to SOAT1 expression in 33 different types of cancer were acquired from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) databases. SOAT1 expression was significantly increased in most cancers and showed a distinct correlation with prognosis. This enhanced expression of the SOAT1 gene was confirmed by evaluating SOAT1 protein expression using tissue microarrays. In addition, we found significant positive associations between SOAT1 expression levels and infiltrating immune cells, including T cells, neutrophils, and macrophages. Moreover, the co-expression analysis between SOAT1 and immune genes showed that many immune-related genes were increased with enhanced SOAT1 expression. A gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed that the expression of SOAT1 correlated with the tumor microenvironment, adaptive immune response, interferon signaling, and cytokine signaling. These findings indicate that SOAT1 is a potential candidate marker for predicting prognosis and a promising target for tumor immunotherapy in cancers.

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Keywords

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Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material File

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