LAGE3 correlates with tumorigenic immune infiltrates in the clear cell renal cell carcinoma microenvironment.

OBJECTIVE

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common type of kidney tumor worldwide. The role of LAGE3 (L Antigen Family Member 3) in ccRCC has not been widely reported. In this study, we explored the clinical significances and biological functions of LAGE3 in ccRCC.

METHODS

The RNA-seq data and the corresponding clinical information of the patients with ccRCC were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. ESTIMATE, quanTiseq, and xCell algorithms were used to estimate the immune infiltration levels in the ccRCC microenvironment.

RESULTS

We found that overexpression of LAGE3 was associated with adverse clinical-pathological factors, and correlated with poor prognosis in multiple ccRCC cohorts. Multivariate analysis indicated that LAGE3 was an independent survival determinant in patients with ccRCC, whereas functional enrichment analysis suggested that LAGE3 may regulate humoral immune response, immunoglobulin complex, and receptor-ligand activity. Further, tumor microenvironment analysis based on different algorithms indicated LAGE3 was positively associated with the immune activity and infiltrating levels of different immune cells. Particularly, LAGE3 expression had a positive impact on different steps of the cancer-immunity cycle.

CONCLUSION

The present findings disclose that LAGE3 could be an independent survival predictor, and might contribute to developing novel ccRCC immunological treatment strategies.