prognostic values of BOLA family members and correlated with immune infiltrates in Pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Abstract Background The BOLA gene family is related to iron homeostasis, consists of three members. Evidence have shown that BOLA family is associated with lung adenocarcinoma, ovarian cancer and hepatic cellular carcinoma. However, the BOLA family's rule in pancreatic adenocarcinoma(PAAD) is poorly understood. Methods we analyzed the expression, prognostic value, and genetic alteration of BOLA family in PAAD patients by several online databases, including Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis, Human Protein Atlas, Kaplan–Meier plotter, cBioPortal and The Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery. Besides, we also investigated the relationship between BOLA family and tumor immune infiltration by The Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) Results The pan-cancer analysis showed the mRNA expression levels of the BOLA family is higher in PAAD tissues than in normal pancreatic tissues, high expression of three BOLA family members were associated with elevated expression of BOLA1 was associated with overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in PAAD, the elevated expression of BOLA2 and BOLA3 were related to shorter DFS. Besides, expression level of BOLA1 was negatively correlated with B cells, CD8+ T cells, macrophages, neutrophil and Dendritic cells, while BOLA2 expression level was negatively correlated with CD8 + T cells, macrophages and Dendritic cells, BOLA3 expression level was correlated with neutrophil. Gene set enrichment analysis showed that BOLA family members were mainly relevant to intracellular iron-sulfur cluster assembly, iron ion homeostasis and cellular redox homeostasis in PAAD. Conclusion The BOLA family expression was associated with prognosis and immune infiltrates in PAAD, Our findings help to add to the limited prognostic markers in PAAD, and the BOLA family may serve as potential targets for immunotherapy.