Affiliation:
1. Digestive Diseases Center, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107,
China
2. Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Digestive Cancer Research, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun
Yat-sen University, Shenzhen 518107, China
3. Scientific Research Center, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau University
Joint Laboratory of Digestive Cancer Research, Digestive Diseases Center, The Seventh Affiliated Hospital of Sun
Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, 518107, Guangdong, China
Abstract
Background:
As a binding protein of Ki67, NIFK plays an important role in the mitosis of cells and is closely related to the progression of specific types of tumors. However, there is
still a lack of systematic analysis of NIFK in pan-cancer and insufficient research to explore its
role in human tumors.
Methods:
We systematically evaluated the pan-cancer expression and mutation of NIFK in human
cancers using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) through large-scale bioinformatics
analysis. In addition, we explored the pan-cancer immunological characteristics of NIFK, especially in colorectal adenocarcinoma (COAD). Furthermore, we used single-cell sequencing to analyze
the expression of NIFK in different cells of COAD tissues and performed GO, KEGG, and gene
set enrichment analysis of NIFK in COAD. Lastly, we evaluated the effects of NIFK knockdown
on the colorectal cancer cell lines in in vitro experiment.
Results:
We found that NIFK was overexpressed in almost all types of tumors and showed significant prognostic efficacy. Additionally, correlations between NIFK and specific immune features,
such as immune cell infiltration, immune checkpoint genes, TMB, and MSI, suggest that NIFK
may be used to guide immunotherapy. Subsequently, it was found that the expression of NIFK
was significantly upregulated in tumor cells through single-cell sequencing analysis, and the
NIFK gene was closely associated with tumor progression and immune therapy response. Finally,
we further elucidated the role of NIFK in colorectal cancer and found that downregulation of
NIFK expression could inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion ability of colorectal cancer cells.
Conclusion:
The results of this study demonstrated that NIFK, as a member of the pan-cancer
genes, will serve as a biomarker and a potential therapeutic target for a range of cancer types, providing new insight into precision medicine.
Publisher
Bentham Science Publishers Ltd.