MACC1 Correlates with Tumor Progression and Immune Cell Infiltration of Colon Adenocarcinoma and is Regulated by the lncRNA ZFAS1/miR-642a-5p Axis

Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is the most common pathologic type of colon cancer. Metastasis is responsible for the high mortality rate of patients with COAD. The gene, metastasis-associated in colon cancer 1 (MACC1), is a biomarker predictive of both metastatic and metastasis-free survival in patients with colon cancer and other solid tumors. However, the underlying mechanism by which MACC1 affect COAD progression and metastasis remains unknown. In this study, we analyzed the expression level and prognostic value of MACC1, as well as their correlation, in patients with various types of cancer included in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) databases. High MACC1 expression was found to be significantly associated with poor prognosis in patients with COAD. Analysis of the potential upstream miRNA of MACC1 showed that miR-642a-5p was downregulated in COAD and was negatively correlated with MACC1 expression. Analysis of the upstream regulators of miR-642a-5p showed that the long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) ZFAS1was the most likely upstream regulator of miR-642a-5p. In addition, the expression of MACC1 correlated positively with tumor immune cell infiltration, as well as with the levels of biomarkers of five kinds of immune cells. In summary, these findings suggest that MACC1 contributes to COAD progression and immune cell infiltration via the ZFAS1/miR-642a-5p/MACC1 axis.