Deciphering the Role of Melatonin-Related Signatures in Tumor Immunity and the Prognosis of Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

Abstract

Rationale. Recent research has suggested that melatonin-related regulators play crucial roles in solid cancers and may be new targets for cancers. However, the characteristics and roles of melatonin modulators in clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) remain largely unknown. Methods. Adopting multiomics data from TCGA and other public datasets, we analysed the expression, mutation, and prognostic evaluation in multiple cancers. ccRCC patients were categorized into two subgroups by an unsupervised cluster algorithm: melatonin-pattern cancer subtype 1 (MPCS1) and subtype 2 (MPCS2). We then explored the immune microenvironment, immune therapy response, and tumor metabolic pathways between the two subtypes. The clinical characteristics, genomic mutation landscape, and molecular inhibitor response were further investigated. Finally, a melatonin regulator-related prognostic model was constructed to predict patient prognosis in ccRCC. Results. We found that melatonin regulators were dysregulated depending on distinct cancer types, which were associated with genomic variation. The two subtypes indicated different clinical characteristics and biological processes in ccRCC. MPCS2, an aggressive subtype, led an advanced clinical stage and poorer survival of ccRCC patients. The activated oncogenic signaling pathway and metabolic signatures were responsible for cancer progression in the MPCS2 subtype. The MPCS2 subgroup suggested a higher tumor mutational burden and immune dysfunction state, resulting in a lower response to immunotherapy. The copy number variations of MPCS2 were significantly more frequent than those of MPCS1. In addition, the two subgroups exhibited distinct drug responsiveness, with MPCS2 being less responsive to multiple drugs. Finally, we established a subtype biomarker-based prognostic risk model that exhibited satisfactory performance in ccRCC patients. Conclusion. Melatonin regulator-related features could remodel functional pathways and the tumor immune microenvironment through genomic mutations and pathway regulation. Melatonin regulator-associated molecular subtypes enhance the understanding of the molecular characteristics of renal cancer and can guide clinical treatment. Activating the melatonergic system axis may improve the effect of immunotherapy for ccRCC.

Role of Melatonin-Related Signatures in the Prognosis of Glioblastoma

“…Single-cell dataset GSE84465 (GPL18573) with GBM tumor samples was accessed from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/). A total of 34 melatoninrelated genes (MT-RGs) were mined from previously published literature 15 .…”

“…To nd out whether genetic variants in melatonin related genes(MT-RGs)are associated with GBM, 34 MT-RGs were included in this study according to the previous study 15 , which are summarized in Table S1., To explore the survival signi cance of MT-RGs, 12 genes were selected as key factors from the above 34 MT-RGs by univariate Cox regression analysis (Fig. 1A) Subsequently, Spearman correlation analysis revealed complex relationships among the 12 prognosis MT-RGs, for example, ECE1 had a strongly negative correlation with MAP2 (Fig.…”