• Jue Wang, Zongrui Jin, Guolin Wu, Zhenfeng Deng, Jilong Wang, Banghao Xu, Hai Zhu, Ya Guo, and Zhang Wen.
• Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi, China.
• Medicine (Baltimore). 2022 Sep 30; 101 (39): e30589e30589.

BackgroundHypoxia is a key factor in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), which is the most common primary liver cancer with poor prognosis. The current study aimed to identify the potential prognostic biomarkers of the hypoxia-associated gene signature in patients with HCC, and to further explore the relationship between hypoxia and immune infiltration.MethodsAfter the determination of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) using the HCC transcriptome data of The Cancer Genome Atlas database and hypoxia-related gene set, the prognosis-associated genes were identified using univariate Cox regression analysis. Then, the hypoxia prognosis model was established via multivariate Cox regression analysis, with functional annotation conducted using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis. CIBERSORT was utilized to analyze the degree of tumor immune invasion, and an International Cancer Genome Consortium cohort to verify the reliability of the prognosis model. Expression levels of hypoxia-associated genes were detected by real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction in HCC samples.Results3 genes (ENO1, SAP30, and STC2) constructed the hypoxia prognosis model. The patients were subdivided into 2 groups based on median risk score, with a high hypoxic score indicating poor prognosis of HCC. The hypoxia signature could be employed as an independent prognostic factor in HCC. In addition, the proportion of macrophages was higher in the high-risk group.ConclusionThe hypoxia-associated signature could be a potential prognostic marker of HCC and provides a different perspective for immunotherapy of HCC.Copyright © 2022 the Author(s). Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.

28 keywords...

hide…