Fu Rui, Luo Xinxia, Ding Yan, Guo Shiwen
Department of Neurosurgery, Affiliated Taihe Hospital, Xi'an Jiaotong University, Shiyan, China.
Hubei Key Laboratory of Embryonic Stem Cell Research, Taihe Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, China.
Neuroimmunomodulation. 2022;29(3):186-201. doi: 10.1159/000519778. Epub 2022 Jan 14.
Methyltransferase-like 7B (METTL7B) is a member of methyltransferase-like family. Little is known about the exact role of METTL7B in cancer. This study aims to investigate the role of METTL7B in gliomas.
The expression of METTL7B in glioma and adjacent normal tissues were examined by using TCGA, Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) database, and clinical tissues.
The results showed that METTL7B was highly expressed in glioma. Patients with high levels of METTL7B usually had poor survival in glioma, especially in low-grade glioma (LGG). Data from CGGA showed that METTL7B was an independent risk factor of glioma and can be used to evaluate the survival time of glioma patients. Hypomethylation in the METTL7B CpG islands was lower in LGG, and all the hypomethylated METTL7B islands were correlated with poor LGG survival. Furthermore, METTL7B levels were correlated with high numbers of tumor infiltrated immune cells in glioma, especially in LGG. ). Gene Set Enrichment Analysis found METTL7B was correlated with leukocyte proliferation, T-cell proliferation, peptidase activity, lymphocyte activation, etc. TCGA and CGGA database analysis showed that there were 1,546 and 1,117 genes that had a synergistic effect with METTL7B in glioma, respectively, and there were 372 genes overlapped between the 2 groups, including PD-L1. Data from clinical tissues also showed PD-L1 was highly expressed in glioma tissues and was positively correlated with METTL7B.
Our study suggested that METTL7B was a potential prognostic biomarker for glioma and other cancers, and it may act as an oncogenic driver and may be a potential therapeutic target in human cancer, especially in LGG.
甲基转移酶样7B（METTL7B）是甲基转移酶样家族的成员。关于METTL7B在癌症中的确切作用知之甚少。本研究旨在探讨METTL7B在胶质瘤中的作用。
利用TCGA、中国胶质瘤基因组图谱（CGGA）数据库及临床组织检测METTL7B在胶质瘤及癌旁正常组织中的表达。
结果显示METTL7B在胶质瘤中高表达。METTL7B水平高的胶质瘤患者通常生存期较差，尤其是在低级别胶质瘤（LGG）中。CGGA数据显示，METTL7B是胶质瘤的独立危险因素，可用于评估胶质瘤患者的生存时间。LGG中METTL7B CpG岛的低甲基化程度较低，所有低甲基化的METTL7B岛均与LGG的不良生存相关。此外，METTL7B水平与胶质瘤中大量肿瘤浸润免疫细胞相关，尤其是在LGG中。基因集富集分析发现METTL7B与白细胞增殖、T细胞增殖、肽酶活性、淋巴细胞活化等相关。TCGA和CGGA数据库分析显示，在胶质瘤中分别有1546个和1117个基因与METTL7B有协同作用，两组之间有372个基因重叠，包括程序性死亡受体配体1（PD-L1）。临床组织数据也显示PD-L1在胶质瘤组织中高表达，且与METTL7B呈正相关。
我们的研究表明，METTL7B是胶质瘤和其他癌症潜在的预后生物标志物，它可能作为致癌驱动因子，可能是人类癌症尤其是LGG中潜在的治疗靶点。
