IGF2BP3 expression in pan-cancer: A bioinformatics-based study of its prognostic relevance and immunological role

Abstract

Background According to several recent studies, the m6A reader IGF2BP3 is primarily implicated in the occurrence and immunological aspects of many cancers. To obtain further insights into IGF2BP3’s role in tumor biology, we conducted a systematic analysis of publicly available databases. Methods Data regarding IGF2BP3 expression in various cancers were extracted from online public databases, including TIMER, GEPIA, HPA, BioGPS, and CCLE. By using the GEPIA and PrognoScan databases, we examined the association of IGF2BP3 expression in pan-cancer with patient survival. We studied the TISIDB to determine whether IGF2BP3 expression in pan-cancer correlated with immune cell infiltration. Furthermore, we assessed whether IGF2BP3 expression showed a correlation with tumor-infiltrating immune cells by referring to the TIMER database. We used R version 4.0.3 to determine the relationship between IGF2BP3 expression and the ICP genes in pan-cancer. Moreover, we used the SangerBox database to assess correlations between IGF2BP3 expression and NEO, TMB, MSI, and DNA MMR genes in human cancers. The IGF2BP3 co-expression network was examined with the LinkedOmics database. Results Our results demonstrated higher IGF2BP3 expression in multiple human cancers than in paired healthy tissues. IGF2BP3 expression strongly correlated with prognosis, ICP, NEO, TMB, and MSI in pan-cancer. Moreover, IGF2BP3 contributed to immune regulation and modulated the tumor microenvironment. Furthermore, the co-expression networks of IGF2BP3 mainly participated in immune regulation. The high IGF2BP3 expression group showed better treatment response to ICB in BLCA, LUAD, LGG, and PAAD. Conclusion Our systematic bioinformatics analysis confirmed that IGF2BP3 could function as an immunotherapeutic and prognostic biomarker in diverse human cancers. Furthermore, in future studies, it is critical to clarify the specific role of IGF2BP3 in certain cancers.