Exploring the correlation of glycolysis-related chondroitin polymerizing factor () with clinical characteristics, immune infiltration, and cuproptosis in bladder cancer.

Bladder cancer (BLCA) is a common malignant neoplasm of the urinary system. Glycolysis is an essential metabolic pathway regulated by various genes with implications for tumor progression and immune escape. Scoring the glycolysis for each sample in the TCGA-BLCA dataset was done using the ssGSEA algorithm for quantification. The results showed that the score in BLCA tissues was markedly greater than those in adjacent tissues. Additionally, the score was found to be correlated with metastasis and high pathological stage. Functional enrichment analyses of the glycolysis-related genes showed they were related to roles associated with tumor metastasis, glucose metabolism, cuproptosis, and tumor immunotherapy in BLCA. Using 3 different machine learning algorithms, we identified chondroitin polymerizing factor () as a central glycolytic gene with high expression in BLCA. In addition, we showed is a valuable diagnostic marker of BLCA with an area under the ROC (AUC) of 0.81. Sequencing BLCA 5637 cells after siRNA-mediated silencing and bioinformatics revealed that positively correlated with the markers of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transformation (EMT), glycometabolism-related enzymes, and immune cell infiltration. In addition, silencing inhibited the infiltration of multiple immune cells in BLCA. Genes that promote cuproptosis negatively correlated with expression and were up-regulated after silencing. High expression was a risk factor for overall and progression-free survival of patients who received immunotherapy for BLCA. Finally, using immunohistochemistry, we demonstrated that the CHPF protein had high expression in BLCA, increasing in high-grade tumors and those with muscle invasion. The CHPF expression levels were also positively associated with F-fluorodeoxyglucose uptake in PET/CT images. We conclude that the glycolysis-related gene is an effective diagnostic and treatment target for BLCA.