AUTHOR=Tong Xinya , Xiang Yilan , Hu Yuanbo , Hu Yingying , Li He , Wang Huilin , Zhao Kong-Nan , Xue Xiangyang , Zhu Shanli TITLE=NSUN2 Promotes Tumor Progression and Regulates Immune Infiltration in Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma JOURNAL=Frontiers in Oncology VOLUME=12 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2022.788801 DOI=10.3389/fonc.2022.788801 ISSN=2234-943X ABSTRACT=

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is one of the most common malignancies in the head and neck with a complex etiology, such as environmental factors, genetic factors, and Epstein–Barr virus infection. The NOP2/Sun domain family, member 2 (NSUN2) is a methyltransferase of m5C methylation modification that has been reported to be involved in the occurrence and progression of various tumors, but its role in NPC remains unclear. In this study, we found that NSUN2 was upregulated in NPC and predicted a poor prognosis for NPC patients in both GEO datasets and our tissue microarrays containing 125 NPC tissues. Next, we demonstrated that NSUN2 promoted the proliferation, migration, and invasion of NPC cells in vitro. Additionally, the differential expression genes between NSUN2-high and low expression patients were mainly enriched in multi-immune cell activation and proliferation. Furthermore, NSUN2 negatively regulates immune cell infiltration in the tumor microenvironment (TME) of NPC, which indicates that the NSUN2 level may be negatively correlated with the sensitivity of immunotherapy and chemotherapy. In conclusion, our findings highlight that NSUN2 might act as an important oncogene involved in NPC progression and serve as a potential biomarker to predict poor prognosis and drug sensitivity of NPC patients.