Prognostic, mutational, and immunologic analysis of CD90 in pan-cancer and validation of DHDK as a drug candidate.

The CD90 gene encodes a cell surface glycoprotein that plays an important role in the development and progression of cancer. Regarding CD90 gene, pan-cancer analysis of investigating the correlation between CD90 and immune filtration, patients prognosis is still unclear. TCGA, GTEx, TIMER 2.0, GEPIA2 databases and web tool were used for analyzing CD90 gene impacts among multiple cancer types. The data visualization of KEGG and GO enrichment analysis were achieved through R codes. In addition, molecular docking and molecular dynamics showed the binding ability of the candidate compounds to proteins, which was verified by in vitro experiments. On the whole, CD90 expression differences exist between tumor tissues and their corresponding normal controls. Meanwhile, CD90 has a significant impact on patient prognosis in multiple cancers. Specifically, CD90 high expression levels are correlated with poor Overall survival (OS) and Disease-free survival (DFS), Disease specific survival (DSS) in the TCGA KIRP and UVM cancer datasets. Additionally, it is worth mentioning that the highest CD90 gene mutation frequency occurs on the cancer type of UVM. Moreover, CD90 expression levels were significantly associated with immune cell infiltration, including cancer associated fibroblast and Endothelial cells. (1E,4E)- 1,7-bis(4-hydroxyphenyl) Hepta- 1,4-dien- 3-one (DHDK) docked well with CD90 protein and the experimental results showed that DHDK interfered with the expression of CD90 in cancer cells. Preliminary experimental results indicate that DHDK holds potential in the future targeted therapy of the CD90 gene.