Increased ASF1B Expression Correlates With Poor Prognosis in Patients With Gliomas

BACKGROUND: Several studies have suggested that anti-silencing function 1 B (ASF1B) can serve as a good potential marker for predicting tumor prognosis. But the values of ASF1B in gliomas have not been elucidated and further confirmation is needed. METHODS: Transcriptomic and clinical data were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA), genotypic tissue expression (GTEx), and the Chinese Gliomas Genome Atlas database (CGGA). Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to investigate the link between clinical variables and ASF1B. Survival analysis was used to assess the association between ASF1B expression and overall survival (OS). The relationship between ASF1B expression and OS was studied using survival analysis. To investigate the probable function and immunological infiltration, researchers used gene ontology (GO) analysis, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), and single-sample GSEA (ssGSEA). RESULTS: In glioma tissues, ASF1B expression was considerably higher than in normal tissues. The survival analysis found that increased ASF1B expression was linked with a poor prognosis in glioma patients. ASF1B demonstrated a high diagnostic value in glioma patients, according to a Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis. ASF1B was found to be an independent predictive factor for OS in a Cox regression study (HR = 1.573, 95% CI: 1.053–2.350, p = 0.027). GO, KEGG, and GSEA functional enrichment analysis revealed that ASF1B was associated with nuclear division, cell cycle, m-phase, and cell cycle checkpoints. Immuno-infiltration analysis revealed that ASF1B was positively related to Th2 cells, macrophages, and aDC and was negatively related to pDC, TFH, and NK CD56 bright cells. CONCLUSION: A high level of ASF1B mRNA expression was correlated with a poor prognosis in glioma patients in this study, implying that it could be a reliable prognostic biomarker for glioma patients.