Background: Cervical cancer is the fourth commonly occurred cancer in women around the world. However, it still lacks effective approaches to improve current prognosis of cervical cancer and prevent metastasis.
Objective: We aim to discover a promising biomarker for cervical cancer prognosis by utilizing bioinformatics analysis.
Methods: Gene expression was analyzed by the datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas Program-Cervical squamous cell carcinoma and endocervical adenocarcinoma (TCGA-CESC) dataset and three independent patient cohort datasets. Biological process and pathway enrichment were performed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways analysis. Immune infiltration was analyzed through TISIDB tool.
Results: SPP1 gene was highly expressed in cervical cancer tissues. In addition, SPP1 was positively correlated to advanced CESC stages and nodal metastasis status. SPP1 co-expressed genes are mainly enriched in immunological processes. Furthermore, SPP1 expression is involved in immune infiltration level, in which several tumour infiltrating lymphocytes are correlated with SPP1. SPP1 overexpression promotes a wide spectrum of chemokines and immunoinhibiors which contribute to CESC progression.
Conclusions: SPP1 is a promising biomarker and a prognostic factor of CESC. Tumour infiltrating lymphocytes are also possibly regulated by SPP1. Our study suggests that investigation on SPP1 is a new direction for CESC therapy.
