The oncogenic role of SNRPB in human tumors: A pan-cancer analysis

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the oncogenic role of small nuclear ribonucleoprotein polypeptides B and B1 (SNRPB) in human tumors. Materials and methods: Study cases were acquired from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, the Gene Expression Omnibus database, The Human Protein Atlas, and the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium. We then used the R package and several online tools to analyze and visualize the role of SNRPB across tumors. Results: We found that the expression of SNRPB was significantly increased in 28 of 33 tumors, and higher expression was observed in late pathological and TNM stages. Significantly decreased levels of SNRPB promoter methylation were observed in 12 tumors. SNRPB was found to be a risk factor for decreased overall survival in 10 tumors (p < 0.05), a risk factor for decreased disease-specific survival in 8 tumors (p < 0.05), and a risk factor for decreased progression-free interval in 7 tumors (p < 0.05). The PPI network of SNRPB and the top 100 coexpressed genes revealed that CDK1, CDC6, AURKB, CCNB1, CCNA2, and CDC45 were the most closely interacting genes across tumors. The GO and KEGG enrichment analyses revealed that SNRPB and the above genes were mainly enriched with respect to functions in cell cycle-related genetic material replication, assembly, and distribution. SNRPB was significantly associated with immune cell infiltration and the expression of immunomodulation-related genes in several but not all tumors. Conclusion and limitations: The expression of SNRPB was significantly elevated in almost all tumors, and the decreased promoter methylation level may contribute to the elevated expression of SNRPB. SNRPB may facilitate the progression of pathological and TNM stages and is a risk factor for unfavorable prognosis across tumors. However, our research was based on data obtained from public databases, without further validation of our findings at the cellular and animal levels. Therefore, further studies are needed to clarify the oncogenic mechanism of SNRPB and its potential as a therapeutic target.