Association of Elevated Expression Levels of in Stromal Cells with an Immunosuppressive Tumor Microenvironment in Low-Grade Glioma, Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma, Skin Cutaneous Melanoma, and Stomach Adenocarcinoma.

Aberrant expression of collagen type IV alpha chain 1 () can influence tumor cell behavior. To examine the association of expression in the tumor microenvironment (TME) with tumor progression, we performed bioinformatics analyses of The Cancer Genome Atlas RNA sequencing and RNA microarray datasets available in public databases and identified upregulated expression in most examined tumor types compared to their normal counterparts. The elevated expression of was correlated with low survival rates of patients with low-grade glioma, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, skin cutaneous melanoma, and stomach adenocarcinoma, thus suggesting its potential use as a biomarker for the poor prognosis of these tumors. However, was mostly expressed in adjacent stromal cells, such as cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and endothelial cells. Additionally, expression was highly correlated with the signatures of CAFs and endothelial cells in all four tumor types. The expression of marker genes for the infiltration of pro-tumoral immune cells, such as Treg, M2, and TAM, and those of immunosuppressive cytokines exhibited very strong positive correlations with expression. Collectively, our data suggest that overexpression in stromal cells may be a potential regulator of tumor-supporting TME composition associated with poor prognosis.