Comprehensive pan-cancer analysis and experiments revealed R3HDM1 as a novel predictive biomarker for prognosis and immune therapy response

R3HDM1, an RNA binding protein with one R3H domain, remains uncharacterized in terms of its association with tumor progression, malignant cell regulation, and the tumor immune microenvironment. This paper aims to fill this gap by analyzing the potential of R3HDM1 in diagnosis, prognosis, chemotherapy, and immune function across various cancers.

Data was collected from the Firehost database (http://gdac.broadinstitute.org) to obtain the TCGA pan-cancer queue containing tumor and normal samples. Additional data on miRNA, TCPA, mutations, and clinical information were gathered from the UCSC Xena database (https://xenabrowser.net/datapages/). The mutation frequency and locus of R3HDM1 in the TCGA database were examined using the cBioPortal. External validation through GEO data was conducted to assess the differential expression of R3HDM1 in different cancers. Protein expression levels were evaluated using the Clinical Proteomics Tumor Analysis Alliance (CPTAC). The differential expression of R3HDM1 was verified in lung adenocarcinoma cell lines and normal lung glandular epithelial cells via RT-qPCR. Cell migration and proliferation experiments were conducted by knocking down the expression of R3HDM1 in two lung adenocarcinoma cell lines using small interfering RNA. The biological role of R3HDM1 in pan-cancer was explored using the GSEA method. Multiple immune infiltration algorithms from the TIMER2.0 database was employed to investigate the correlation between R3HDM1 expression and the tumor immune microenvironment. Validation of transcriptome immune infiltration was based on 140 single-cell datasets from the TISCH database. The study also characterized a pan-cancer survival profile and analyzed the differential expression of R3HDM1 in different molecular subtypes. The relationship between R3HDM1 and drug resistance was investigated using four chemotherapy data sources: CellMiner, GDSC, CTRP and PRISM. The impact of chemicals on the expression of R3HDM1 was explored through the CTD database.

The study revealed differential expression of R3HDM1 in various tumors, indicating its potential as an early diagnostic marker. Changes in somatic copy number (SCNA) and DNA methylation were identified as factors contributing to abnormal expression levels. Additionally, the study found that R3HDM1 expression is associated with clinical features, metabolic pathways, and important pathways related to metastasis and the immune system. High expression of R3HDM1 was linked to poor prognosis across different tumors and altered drug sensitivity. Furthermore, the expression of R3HDM1 showed significant correlations with immune modulatory molecules and biomarkers of lymphocyte subpopulation infiltration. Finally, the study highlighted four chemicals that could influence the expression of R3HDM1.

Overall, this study proposes that R3HDM1 expression is a promising biomarker for predicting the prognosis of cancer, especially lung adenocarcinoma, and the efficacy of immunotherapy, demonstrating the rationale for further exploration in the development of anti-tumor therapies.