A pan-cancer analysis of the expression and prognostic significance of PDRG1

BACKGROUND: PDRG1 are involved in various physiological regulations of cells, include cell proliferation, growth, apoptosis and cell cycle regulation, but their roles in cancer have not been clearly studied. METHODS: Firstly, we evaluated the expression and prognostic significance of PDRG1 using a pan-cancer analysis of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Genotypic Tissue Expression (GTEx) databases. Secondly, correlations between PDRG1 and pan-cancer immune cells, m6A methylation, tumor mutation burden (TMB), and microsatellite instability (MSI) were investigated. Finally, we explored the relationship between PDRG1 expression and clinical stage in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). RESULTS: We found that PDRG1 was significantly overexpressed in bladder urothelial carcinoma (BLCA), breast invasive carcinoma (BRCA), cholangiocarcinoma (CHOL), liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC), and other tumor tissues and was associated with prognosis. In addition, PDRG1 was closely associated with pan-cancer immune cells, m6A methylation, TMB, and MSI expression. The expression of PDRG1 in HCC was correlated with clinical stage, and western blot assay confirmed that PDRG1 was significantly overexpressed in HCC tissues. CONCLUSIONS: PDRG1 may be an important pan-cancer molecular biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis, and our results may provide a theoretical basis for its future clinical application in cancer diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis, and have been preliminarily validated in HCC.