Expression Predicts Poor Prognosis in Renal Cell Carcinoma with Immunosuppressive Tumor Microenvironment.

is a protein-coding gene, belonging to the FXYD protein family associated with Na+/K+-ATPase enzymes and chloride ion channels. Accumulating evidence suggests the biological role of in multiple cancers. However, the prognostic value of expression in clear renal cell carcinoma (KIRC) is unclear. Therefore, we evaluated the clinical data with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and immunoinhibitory gene expression data using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset (GSE29609). First, the high KIRC patients had distinct clinical characteristics, including age, sex, disease stage, histological grade, and hypoxia-related gene expressions. Next, gene expression was correlated with poor overall survival in both TCGA and GSE29609 cohorts. The ESTIMATE algorithm revealed that higher mRNA levels were associated with increased infiltration of immune cells and tumor purity. Moreover, the high KIRC tissue harbored increased TILs such as B cells, CD8+ T cells, and M1 macrophage, whereas NK cells and neutrophils were decreased. In addition, we showed was co-expressed with several immunoinhibitory genes related to T cell exhaustion such as , , , , and . In conclusion, is an unfavorable prognostic biomarker associated with hypoxia, pro-tumor TILs, and T cell exhaustion.