Identification of DNA topoisomerase II-alpha as a regulatory target in hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background: Although DNA topoisomerase II-alpha (TOP2A) has been reported to be associated with tumour pathological processes, systematic research in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis remains scarce. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the role of differential TOP2A expression in HCC.Results: Our findings revealed that TOP2A was significantly overexpressed in patients with HCC. Higher TOP2A expression is an independent risk factor for survival and prognosis. Subsequently, GO and KEGG pathway analyses showed TOP2A was mainly enriched in cell cycle, DNA replication, immunity, and metabolic-related pathway. We then conducted an integrated analysis of TOP2A, it showed specific relationship between TOP2A and immune-infiltrating cells in HCC. Furthermore, the latent function of query drugs in HCC was explored by integrating drug‑target, drug‑pathway and drug‑protein interactions.Conclusions: Mechanistically, we suggest that overexpression of TOP2A in patients with liver cancer can trigger an anti-tumour immune response by modulating the effective immune response and lymphocyte infiltration. Our findings suggest that TOP2A may play essential biological roles in HCC progression and represent potentially important candidate target in HCC therapy.