is a novel EMT-related biomarker and predicts poor survival in glioma.

BACKGROUND

In cancer, kappa B-interacting protein () has rarely been reported. This study aimed at investigating its expression pattern and biological function in brain glioma at the transcriptional level.

METHODS

We selected 301 glioma patients with microarray data from CGGA database and 697 glioma patients with RNAseq data from TCGA database. Transcriptional data and clinical data of 998 samples were analyzed. Statistical analysis and figure generating were performed with R language.

RESULTS

We found that expression showed positive correlation with WHO grade of glioma. was increased in isocitrate dehydrogenase (IDH) wild type and mesenchymal molecular subtype of glioma. Gene ontology analysis demonstrated that was profoundly associated with extracellular matrix organization, cell-substrate adhesion and response to wounding in both pan-glioma and glioblastoma. Subsequent gene set enrichment analysis revealed that was particularly correlated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). To further elucidate the relationship between and EMT, we performed gene set variation analysis to screen the EMT-related signaling pathways and found that expression was significantly associated with PI3K/AKT, hypoxia and TGF-β pathway. Moreover, expression was found to be synergistic with key biomarkers of EMT, especially with N-cadherin, vimentin, snail, slug and TWIST1. Finally, higher indicated significantly shorter survival for glioma patients.

CONCLUSIONS

was associated with more aggressive phenotypes of gliomas. Furthermore, was significantly involved in EMT and could serve as an independent prognosticator in glioma.