Bioinformatics-based identification of CCNB2 as a key gene in the progression of Chromophobe cell carcinoma of kidney

Abstract

The present work aimed to screen biomarkers associated with Chromophobe cell carcinoma of kidney(chrcc)by bioinformatics methods as key genes to predict the prognosis of chrcc.The GSE15641 dataset was acquired from Gene Expression Omnibus(GEO) database, Totally 1153 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified.thereafter, DEGs were detected to carry out Gene Ontology (GO) annotation and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Gene and Genome (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis. Moreover, the protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks were constructed and visualized using Cytoscape software to identify pivotal genes,including KRAS, EGFR, EHHADH and CCNB2, were obtained, with CCNB2 being identified as the only significant core gene according to Kaplan-Meier (K-M)survival analysis.According to our results, CCNB2 expression was notably higher in The Cancer Genome Atlas(TCGA)-chrcc patients than in normal samples, and the high CCNB2 expression in cancer tissues was associated with adverse clinicopathological factors. The high CCNB2 expression group had markedly poor overall survival(OS) and progression-free interval (PFI) compared with low expression group. Meanwhile, immune infiltration analysis demonstrated a positive correlation between CCNB2 expression and Th2 cells enrichment levels in chrcc patients, and a negative correlation between CCNB2 expression and Cytotoxic cells as well as DC cells. At last, according to the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis(GSEA) enrichment results including CCNB2 gene, there was a significant difference in the classification of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) subclass and breast cancer (BC).In the current work, CCNB2 can be considered as a predictive molecular marker and a potential therapeutic target for chrcc.