Increased Expression of QPRT in Breast Cancer Infers a Poor Prognosis and Is Correlated to Immunocytes Infiltration

Abstract

Breast cancer (BRCA) is a class of highly heterogeneous tumors. There is a positive correlation between the overall survival of BRCA and immune infiltration of the tumor microenvironment. QPRT is a rarely reported cancer gene, and the underlying mechanism is poorly understood. Based on TCGA data, the role that QPRT plays in BRCA is evaluated in this study. This study used GEPIA to analyze the expression of QPRT in BRCA and, based on the survival module, assessed the impact of QPRT on the survival of patients with BRCA. Furthermore, this study collected the BRCA data set from TCGA and, through utilizing logistic regression, discussed the relationship between QPRT expression and clinical information. Cox regression analysis was used to obtain clinicopathological features relating to the total survival rate of patients with TCGA. Besides, based on the “correlation” and CIBERSORT module, the relationship between cancer immune infiltration and QPRT was analyzed in GEPIA. Tumor status, pathological staging, and lymph nodes have an obvious correlation with the rise of QPRT expression according to the logistic regression univariate analysis. In this analysis, QPRT is expressed as a categorical-dependent variable (median expression value is 2.5). Furthermore, based on multivariate analysis, independent factors for favorable prognosis include negative pathological stage, increased QPRT expression, and remote metastasis. Among them, CIBERSORT analysis found that the increase in QPRT expression will increase with the growth of the level of immune infiltration of neutrophils, B cells, T cells, and mast cells. In addition, the “correlation” module using GEPIA was used to confirm. Taking all factors into consideration, the rise in QPRT expression is related to a good prognosis and a grown proportion of immune cells in BRCA, such as neutrophils, B cells, mast cells, and T cells. These results suggest that QPRT can be used to be a possible biological indicator to evaluate the immune infiltration level of BRCA and its prognosis.