Protein interacting with C-kinase 1 is correlated to prognosis and immune infiltrates of gastric cancer.

Abstract

Background: Protein interacting with C-kinase 1 (PICK1) has been proved to be involved in many malignant tumors, such as neurological tumors, digestive system tumors and breast cancer. However, its biological role in tumor immune microenvironment of gastric cancer (GC) is still unclear.

Methods: Public datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases were acquired for the purpose of examining the relationship between the expression of PICK1 mRNA and clinical characteristics, as well as the survival of patients with GC. The utilization of CIBERSORT and TIMER web servers allowed for the exploration of the association between the expression level of PICK1 mRNA and the level of immune infiltrates in GC tissues. Additionally, the implementation of Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) provided evidences for this connection. Finally, correlation analysis was conducted to assess the relationship between the expression of PICK1 mRNA and specific classical immune cell markers.

Results: We discovered that decreased PICK1 mRNA expression in GC tissues indicated a poor TNM stage and shorter overall survival duration. In addition, expression level of PICK1 mRNA was demonstrated to be relevant to the relative levels of immune infiltrates in GC tissues, especially the macrophages. Furthermore, our findings demonstrated that PICK1 mRNA was adversely linked with M2 macrophage markers.

Conclusion: The decreased PICK1 expression was believed to benefit the infiltration of macrophages and the polarization of M2 macrophages, and finally lead to an unfavorable prognosis for GC patients.