HAMP as a Prognostic Biomarker for Colorectal Cancer Based on Tumor Microenvironment Analysis

Abstract

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the most common digestive tumor in the world and has a high mortality rate. The development and treatment of CRC are related to the immune microenvironment, but immune response-related prognostic biomarkers are lacking. In this study, we used The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to explore the tumor microenvironment (TME) and weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA) to identify significant prognostic genes. We also identified differentially expressed genes in the TCGA data and explored immune-related genes and transcription factors (TFs). Then, we built a TF regulatory network and performed a comprehensive prognostic analysis of an lncRNA-associated competitive endogenous RNA network (ceRNA network) to build a prognostic model. CCR8 and HAMP were identified both in the WGCNA key module and as immune-related genes. HAMP had good prognostic value for CRC and was highly expressed in CRC tissues and had a negative correlation with CD4+ T cells and M0 macrophages based on immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence staining of clinical specimens.We found that HAMP had high prognostic and therapeutic target value for CRC and was associated with liver metastasis. These analysis results revealed that HAMP may be a candidate immune-related prognostic biomarker for CRC.

Construction of a prognostic signature associated with liver metastases for prognosis and immune response prediction in colorectal cancer

“…It is shown that HAMP is closely associated with immune regulation ( 55 ), and our enrichment analysis results suggested that HAMP-related genes are mostly engaged in immune activation pathways (cytokine-cytokine receptor interactions, chemokine signaling pathways) in CRC. However, in CRC, the relevance of HAMP to immune cell infiltration and stromal cells in the TME is still unclear.…”

“…Our results showed that upregulation of HAMP is associated with DNA mismatch repair genes, TMB, and MSI with different cancers, demonstrating the crucial role of HAMP in predicting the effects of immunotherapy. It is shown that HAMP is closely associated with immune regulation (55), and our enrichment analysis results suggested that HAMP-related genes are mostly engaged in immune activation pathways (cytokine-cytokine receptor interactions, chemokine signaling pathways) in CRC. However, in CRC, the relevance of HAMP to immune cell infiltration and stromal cells in the TME is still unclear.…”

Assessment of Diagnosis, Prognosis and Immune Infiltration Response to the Expression of the Ferroptosis-Related Molecule HAMP in Clear Cell Renal Cell Carcinoma

“…It is well known that HAMP plays an essential negative role in iron homeostasis, and its production of hepcidin was proven to be expressed in many cancers and non-cancer tissues [14,15]. In addition, a previous study showed that HAMP induced aggressive hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), colorectal cancer (CRC) and skin cutaneous melanoma (SKCM), so we can infer that HAMP may be a potential prognostic and diagnostic biomarker for KIRC [16][17][18].…”