The prognostic biomarker TPGS2 is correlated with immune infiltrates in pan-cancer: a bioinformatics analysis.

Background: Tubulin polyglutamylase complex subunit 2 (TPGS2) is an element of the neuronal polyglutamylase complex that plays a role in the post-translational addition of glutamate residues to C-terminal tubulin tails. Recent research has shown that TPGS2 is associated with some tumors, but the roles of TPGS2 in tumor immunity remain unclear.

Methods: The research data were mainly sourced from The Cancer Genome Atlas. The data were analyzed to identify potential correlations between expression and survival, gene alterations, the tumor mutational burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), immune infiltration, and various immune-related genes across various cancers. The Wilcoxon rank-sum test was used to identify the significance. A log-rank test and univariate Cox regression analysis were performed to assess the survival state of the patients. Spearman's correlation coefficients were used to show the correlations.

Results: exhibited abnormal expression patterns in most types of cancers, and has promising prognostic potential in adrenocortical carcinoma and liver hepatocellular carcinoma. Further, expression was significantly correlated with molecular and immune subtypes. Moreover, the single-cell analyses showed that the expression of was associated with the cell cycle, metastasis, invasion, inflammation, and DNA damage. In addition, the immune cell infiltration analysis and gene-set enrichment analysis demonstrated that a variety of immune cells and immune processes were associated with expression in various cancers. Further, immune regulators, including immunoinhibitors, immunostimulators, the major histocompatibility complex, chemokines, and chemokine receptors, were correlated with expression in different cancer types. Finally, the TMB and MSI, which have been identified as powerful predictors of immunotherapy, were shown to be correlated with the expression of across human cancers.

Conclusions: is aberrantly expressed in most cancer tissues and might be associated with immune cell infiltration in the tumor microenvironment. could serve not only as a biomarker for predicting clinical outcomes, but also as a promising biomarker for evaluating and developing new approaches to immunotherapy in many types of cancers, especially colon adenocarcinoma and stomach adenocarcinoma.