Guo J, Huang M, Deng S, Wang H, Wang Z, Yan B. Highly expressed
RPLP2 inhibits ferroptosis to promote hepatocellular carcinoma progression and predicts poor prognosis.
Cancer Cell Int 2023;
23:278. [PMID:
37980521 PMCID:
PMC10656893 DOI:
10.1186/s12935-023-03140-0]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/10/2023] [Accepted: 11/12/2023] [Indexed: 11/20/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND
RPLP2, an integral part of ribosomal stalk, plays an important role in the tumorigenesis of various cancers. However, its specific effect on HCC remains elusive.
METHODS
TCGA, GTEx, HCCDB, HPA, UALCAN, MethSurv, TISIDB, K-M plotter, FerrDb, RNAactDrug, STRING, Cytoscape and R studio were conducted for bioinformatics analysis. RPLP2 expression level in HCC was verified by IHC and western blot. IHC was used to demonstrate the immune cell infiltration. Functional experiments including CCK8, transwell and colony formation assays, and nude mice xenograft model were performed for in vitro and in vivo validation. Western blot, IHC, CCK8 assay and detection of GSH and lipid ROS were adopted to determine the effect of RPLP2 on the ferroptosis of HCC cells.
RESULTS
Here, we demonstrate that elevated level of RPLP2 is strongly associated with advanced clinicopathologic features, and predicts poor prognosis of HCC patients. Additionally, DNA methylation level of RPLP2 decreases in HCC, and significantly correlates with patients outcome. Moreover, high RPLP2 expression level is linked closely to the unfavorable immune infiltration. Most importantly, RPLP2 positively associates with ferroptosis suppressor GPX4, and inhibition of RPLP2 could lead to the acceleration of ferroptosis to suppress tumor progression of HCC. Last, drug sensitivity analysis predicts many drugs that potentially target RPLP2.
CONCLUSION
Together, our study reveals previous unrecognized role of RPLP2 in HCC, and provides new regulatory mechanism of ferroptosis, indicating RPLP2 may be a novel therapeutic target for HCC.
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