CRYAB predicts clinical prognosis and is associated with immunocyte infiltration in colorectal cancer

Junsheng Deng; Xiaoli Chen; Ting Zhan; Mengge Chen; Xisheng Yan; Xiaodong Huang

doi:10.7717/peerj.12578

CRYAB predicts clinical prognosis and is associated with immunocyte infiltration in colorectal cancer

PeerJ. 2021 Dec 10:9:e12578. doi: 10.7717/peerj.12578. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Junsheng Deng^#¹, Xiaoli Chen^#¹, Ting Zhan¹, Mengge Chen¹, Xisheng Yan², Xiaodong Huang¹

Affiliations

¹ Gastroenterology, Tongren Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
² Tongren Hospital of Wuhan Unversity, Wuhan, Hubei, China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Background: αB-Crystallin (CRYAB) is differentially expressed in various tumors. However, the correlation between CRYAB and immune cell infiltration in colorectal cancer (CRC) remains unclear.

Materials & methods: Kaplan-Meier survival curves in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were used to evaluate the relationship between CRYAB expression and both overall survival and progression-free survival. The relationships between CRYAB expression and infiltrating immune cells and their corresponding gene marker sets were examined using the TIMER database.

Results: The expression of CRYAB was lower in CRC tumor tissues than in normal tissues (P < 0.05). High CRYAB gene expression and high levels of CRYAB gene methylation were correlated with high-grade malignant tumors and more advanced tumor, nodes and metastasis (TNM) cancer stages. In addition, in colorectal cancer, there was a positive correlation between CRYAB expression and immune infiltrating cells including neutrophils, macrophages, CD8 + T cells, and CD4 + T cells, as well as immune-related genes including CD2, CD3D, and CD3E. Methylation sites such as cg13084335, cg15545878, cg13210534, and cg15318568 were positively correlated with low expression of CRYAB.

Conclusion: Because CRYAB likely plays an important role in immune cell infiltration, it may be a potential tumor-suppressor gene in CRC and a potential novel therapeutic target and predictive biomarker for colorectal cancer (CRC).

Keywords: CRYAB; Colorectal cancer; Immune cells; Immune genes; Methylation.

Grants and funding

This study was funded by the Department of Finance of Hubei Province and the Department of Science and Technology of Hubei Province, under a special project of the Hubei Provincial Central Government for guiding local science and technology development (Xiaodong Huang, grant no. 2019ZYYD067), and by the Youth Project of Health Commission of Wuhan (Xiaoli Chen, grant no. WX20Q17). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.