• Li Tian and Yong Liao.
• Key Laboratory of Molecular Biology on Infectious Diseases, Ministry of Education, Chongqing, China.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2022 Aug 19; 101 (33): e29548e29548.

AbstractHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has high mortality and incidence rates around the world with limited therapeutic options. There is an urgent need for identification of novel therapeutic targets and biomarkers for early diagnosis and predicting patient survival with HCC. Several studies (GSE102083, GSE29722, GSE101685, and GSE112790) from the GEO database in HCC were screened and analyzed by GEO2R, gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes enrichment analysis were conducted with the Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery. The protein-protein interaction network was plotted and the module analysis was performed using Search Tool for the Retrieval of Inter-acting Genes/Proteins database and Cytoscape. The expression and survival of key genes were identified using UALCAN, Kaplan-Meier Plotter and ONCOMINE online databases, and the immune infiltration level of key genes was analyzed via the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) database. Through database analysis, eight key genes were finally screened out, and the expressions of cyclin-dependent kinase regulatory subunit 2 and glucose-6-phosphatase catalytic (G6PC), which were closely related to the survival of HCC patients, was detected by using UALCAN. Further analysis on the differential expression of G6PC in multiple cancerous tumors and normal tissues revealed low expression in many solid tumors by Oncomine and TIMER. In addition, Kaplan-Meier plotter and UALCAN database analysis to access diseases prognosis suggested that low expression of G6PC was significantly associated with poor overall survival in HCC patients. Finally, TIMER database analysis showed a significant negative correlation between G6PC and infiltration levels of six kinds of immune cells. The somatic copy number alterations of G6PC were associated with B cells, CD8+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, macrophages, dentritic cells and neutrophils. These bioinformatic data identified G6PC as a potential key gene in the diagnosis and prognosis of HCC.Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

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