TRIM56: a promising prognostic immune biomarker for glioma revealed by pan-cancer and single-cell analysis

Abstract

Tripartite-motif 56 (TRIM56) is a member of the TRIM family, and was shown to be an interferon-inducible E3 ubiquitin ligase that can be overexpressed upon stimulation with double-stranded DNA to regulate stimulator of interferon genes (STING) to produce type I interferon and thus mediate innate immune responses. Its role in tumors remains unclear. In this study, we investigated the relationship between the expression of the TRIM56 gene and its prognostic value in pan-cancer, identifying TRIM56 expression as an adverse prognostic factor in glioma patients. Therefore, glioma was selected as the primary focus of our investigation. We explored the differential expression of TRIM56 in various glioma subtypes and verified its role as an independent prognostic factor in gliomas. Our research revealed that TRIM56 is associated with malignant biological behaviors in gliomas, such as proliferation, migration, and invasion. Additionally, it can mediate M2 polarization of macrophages in gliomas. The results were validated in vitro and in vivo. Furthermore, we utilized single-cell analysis to investigate the impact of TRIM56 expression on cell communication between glioma cells and non-tumor cells. We constructed a multi-gene signature based on cell markers of tumor cells with high TRIM56 expression to enhance the prediction of cancer patient prognosis. In conclusion, our study demonstrates that TRIM56 serves as a reliable immune-related prognostic biomarker in glioma.