Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 16 pp 6579—6593
ALKBH family members as novel biomarkers and prognostic factors in human breast cancer
- 1 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Hunan Provincial People’s Hospital (The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan Normal University), Changsha 410005, Hunan, China
- 2 Department of Anesthesiology, Third Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
- 3 Department of Pathology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
- 4 National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
- 5 Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha 410008, Hunan, China
Received: April 28, 2022 Accepted: July 27, 2022 Published: August 17, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204231How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Chen et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Breast cancer is the most common lethal carcinoma worldwide and better targeted therapies are still worthy of exploration, having had some great successes already. Abnormal expression of ALKBH members were found in various cancers, and the roles played by it were the focus of attention. The ALKBH gene family encodes nine homologous enzymes (ALKBH1-8 and FTO) to repair DNA or RNA depending on Fe2+ and α-ketoglutarate (α-KG), which is related to carcinogenesis. In this study, we applied several databases to explore the roles of ALKBHs in breast cancer. We found that ALKBH members were abnormal expression in breast cancer and associated with tumor stage and subclasses. Higher alteration rates of ALKBH family were found in breast cancer. Function enrichment revealed that several cancer-associated signal pathways were related to ALKBH family such as PI3K-Akt signaling pathway and axon guidance. Infiltration of immune cells (Eosinophiles, NK CD56bright cells, mast cells, T helper cells and so on) were strongly related to ALKBHs. Moreover, we further found that there was strong correlation between ALKBH7 and higher age, later T stage, ER/PR positive and post-menopause of breast cancer patients, and patients with higher ALKBH7 expression had shorter overall survival (OS) and post progression survival (PPS). In conclusion, our findings may provide novel insights into ALKBH-targeted therapy for breast cancer patients, and ALKBH7 may be a potential prognostic biomarker.