Bioinformatics Analysis of Potential Therapeutic Targets and Prognostic Biomarkers amid CXC Chemokines in Ovarian Carcinoma Microenvironment

Abstract

Background. Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the leading lethal gynecologic cancers of women around the world. More than 70% of patients are diagnosed with stage III or IV with poor outcome. This is partly because of lacking early effective screening techniques and potential biomarkers of OC. CXC chemokines in tumor microenvironment (TME) and their interaction with relative receptors can excite the downstream signaling pathways to influence tumor progression. However, the role of CXC chemokines in OC has not been identified. Methods. ONCOMINE, GEPIA, Kaplan–Meier plotter, cBioPortal, TIMER, Metascape, and LinkedOmics were applied in our study. Results. The transcriptional levels of CXCL1/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/16/17 were significantly elevated while CXCL3 was obviously reduced in OC vs normal ovarian tissue. CXCL8/9/11/13 were correlated with clinic pathological stage. Patients with low expression of CXCL8/9/11/13 were associated with better prognosis. We also found that CXCL3 and CXC12 could be used as potential prognostic markers of OC through Kaplan–Meier plotter. Patients with high expression of CXCL3/12 had a significantly better prognosis. Their functions focus on locomotion, signaling, response to stimulus, undergoing the process of multiorganism, immune system, biological regulation, etc. The differentiated CXC chemokines mainly participate in cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction, chemokine signaling pathway, IL-17 signaling pathway, and toll-like receptor signaling pathway. Our results showed that CXC chemokines were highly correlated with infiltration of immune cells. The kinase targets of differentially expressed CXC chemokines are mainly in ATM, LYN, LCK, PLK1, FYN, CDK2, and ATR. Conclusions. Our results may provide a new insight for selecting precision biomarkers of targeted therapy of OC.