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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Immunol.

Sec. Cancer Immunity and Immunotherapy

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1531940

This article is part of the Research Topic Revolutionizing Breast Cancer Treatment: The Role of Adaptive Clinical Trials and Predictive Biomarkers View all articles

ESCRT may function as a tumor biomarker, transitioning from pan-cancer analysis to validation within Breast cancer

Provisionally accepted
晓睿 陈 晓睿 陈 1,2Xue-ying Tan Xue-ying Tan 2Zong-liang Zang Zong-liang Zang 3Wei-qing Song Wei-qing Song 2*jiangshui yuan jiangshui yuan 2*
  • 1 Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Qingdao University Medical College, Qingdao, China
  • 2 Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China
  • 3 The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, Shandong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Background: Studies show ESCRT genes impact cell aging, immune environment, and tumors; BRCA was used to explore their effect on tumor prognosis and therapy.Methods: Using the data sets of Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Genome-Tissue Expression Plan (GTEX), human protein mapping (HPA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC), R software package, bioinformatics methods were used to mine the potential carcinogenic effects of ESCRT, including the expression level, prognostic value and immune value of ESCRT in various types of tumor tissues; subsequently, the potential function of ESCRT family genes was further verified in breast cancer.Results: ESCRT showed significant differential expression in various cancers, such as bladder urothelial carcinoma, liver, cervical, renal, esophageal, and head and neck cancers (P < 0.05). Abnormal ESCRT expression is associated with poor prognosis in a variety of cancers, such as adrenocortical carcinoma, bladder-urothelial carcinoma, breast cancer, and cervical cancer (P < 0.05). The expression level of ESCRT was significantly associated with that of immune cell infiltration and modulation of stromal / immune score (all P < 0.05). The enrichment analysis showed that ESCRT is associated with immune-related functions and transport signaling pathways in various tumor cells. Moreover, ESCRT serves as an early diagnostic marker for several tumors and is significantly associated with its prognosis. It confirms that ESCRT is a gene associated with most of the immune-infiltrating cells in pan-carcinoma. Together, studies also highlight the importance of the ESCRT family gene VPS37D in breast cancer initiation, progression, and immune response.Conclusion: This study highlights ESCRT's potential in tumor detection via pan-cancer analysis, showing expression variations between tumor and normal tissues, its role in cancer progression through the immune microenvironment, and its specificity and sensitivity in detection. The VPS37D gene, with significant variation in breast cancer, predicts patient prognosis and relates to the tumor microenvironment, suggesting ESCRT as a novel biomarker for early diagnosis and prognosis assessment.

    Keywords: Xiao-rui Chen, Xue-ying Tan Pan-cancer, ESCRT, biomarker, Immune Cell Infiltration, VPS37D

    Received: 21 Nov 2024; Accepted: 07 Mar 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 陈, Tan, Zang, Song and yuan. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Wei-qing Song, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Qingdao, 266011, Shandong Province, China
    jiangshui yuan, Qingdao Municipal Hospital, Qingdao, 266011, Shandong Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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