AUTHOR=Zhao Kaidi , Yi Yuexiong , Ma Zhou , Zhang Wei 

TITLE=INHBA is a Prognostic Biomarker and Correlated With Immune Cell Infiltration in Cervical Cancer

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Genetics

VOLUME=12

YEAR=2022

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/genetics/articles/10.3389/fgene.2021.705512

DOI=10.3389/fgene.2021.705512

ISSN=1664-8021

ABSTRACT=<p><bold>Background:</bold> Inhibin A (<italic>INHBA</italic>), a member of the <italic>TGF</italic>-<italic>β</italic> superfamily, has been shown to be differentially expressed in various cancer types and is associated with prognosis. However, its role in cervical cancer remains unclear.</p><p><bold>Methods:</bold> We aimed to demonstrate the relationship between <italic>INHBA</italic> expression and pan-cancer using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Next, we validated <italic>INHBA</italic> expression in cervical cancer using the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database, including GSE7803, GSE63514, and GSE9750 datasets. Enrichment analysis of <italic>INHBA</italic> was performed using the R package “clusterProfiler.” We analyzed the association between immune infiltration level and <italic>INHBA</italic> expression in cervical cancer using the single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) method by the R package GSVA. We explored the association between <italic>INHBA</italic> expression and prognosis using the R package “survival”.</p><p><bold>Results:</bold> Pan-cancer data analysis showed that <italic>INHBA</italic> expression was elevated in 19 tumor types, including cervical cancer. We further confirmed that <italic>INHBA</italic> expression was higher in cervical cancer samples from GEO database and cervical cancer cell lines than in normal cervical cells. Survival prognosis analysis indicated that higher <italic>INHBA</italic> expression was significantly associated with reduced Overall Survival (<italic>p</italic> = 0.001), disease Specific Survival (<italic>p</italic> = 0.006), and Progression Free Interval (<italic>p</italic> = 0.001) in cervical cancer and poorer prognosis in other tumors. GSEA and infiltration analysis showed that <italic>INHBA</italic> expression was significantly associated with tumor progression and some types of immune infiltrating cells.</p><p><bold>Conclusion:</bold><italic>INHBA</italic> was highly expressed in cervical cancer and was significantly associated with poor prognosis. Meanwhile, it was correlated with immune cell infiltration and could be used as a promising prognostic target for cervical cancer.</p>