Bioinformatic Identification of GPN1 as a Novel Prognostic and Immunological Biomarker for LUAD and other tumors

Abstract

Abstract The effect of GPN1 on lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and pan-cancer remains uncertain. Therefore, the current study aimed to characterise the oncological and immunological roles of GPN1 in LUAD by performing a multifaceted analysis based on the TCGA database (including gene expression analysis, survival analysis, tumour–immune interactions, and functional clustering analysis). In addition, a comprehensive biological landscape of GPN1 was depicted by performing a pan-cancer analysis. Our results demonstrated that the expression levels of GPN1 in LUAD tissues were significantly higher than in nontumourous tissue. High expression of GPN1 predicted poor prognosis in LUAD patients, evidenced by unfavourable OS, DSS and PFI. Overexpression of GPN1 was also significantly associated with advanced N stage, advanced AJCC pathologic stage and a large number of pack-years smoked. Moreover, a multivariate analysis identified GPN1 expression as an independent prognostic risk factor for LUAD. Furthermore, high expression of GPN1 showed a strongly negative correlation with immunoscores but a positive correlation with an abundance of several immunosuppressive cells, indicating that GPN1 was highly likely to play an important role in modulating the tumour microenvironment (TME) and modifying an immunosuppressive microenvironment in LUAD. Finally, a systematic pan-cancer analysis identified GPN1 as a prognostic and immunological biomarker for multiple other cancer types. In summary, our research demonstrated that GPN1 can function as a prognostic and immunological marker in LUAD and multiple other tumours.