APOBEC3G expression correlates with unfavorable prognosis and immune infiltration in kidney renal clear cell carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC) is the most common pathological subtype of renal cell cancer. APOBEC3 activity has been identified in a variety of human cancers. Although its involvement in cancer has been studied widely, its influence on the tumor immune microenvironment remains poorly understood. Therefore, this study aimed to focus on the effect of APOBEC3 on tumor immune microenvironment of KIRC. METHODS: In this study, we comprehensively analyzed the expression and prognostic significance of the APOBEC3 family in pan-cancer using multiple databases. The functions of key APOBEC3 family members were further investigated in KIRC, with APOBEC3G determined to be a candidate biomarker for unfavorable prognosis. We subsequently explored the correlation of APOBEC3G with the tumor immune environment in KIRC by analyzing the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset, then validated the prognostic significance and PD-L1 correlation of APOBEC3G by using tissue microarrays which included 233 primary tumor samples from patients with renal clear cell carcinoma. RESULTS: The APOBEC3 family was overexpressed in KIRC and high APOBEC3 expression predicted poor prognosis. In addition, APOBEC3G was positively correlated with the expression of immunoinhibitors such as TIGIT, LAG3, CD96, PD-1, and CTLA4. In addition, APOBEC3G had a positive correlation with immunosuppressive cells, including regulatory T cell and myeloid-derived suppressor cell. Finally, based on 233 clinical samples, we validated that high expression of APOBEC3G contributed to a poor prognosis for KIRC patients and the positive relationship between APOBEC3G and PD-L1 expression. High APOBEC3G expression was also found to be more common in patients with sarcomatoid histology (P = 0.0026). CONCLUSIONS: Our study showed that APOBEC3G was a prognostic biomarker correlated with the immune response in KIRC. In addition, APOBE3G had a positive correlation with PD-L1 expression and sarcomatoid histology, perhaps suggesting the potential impact of APOBEC3G on immunotherapy.