Identification of TUBA1C as a prognostic biomarker and associated with immune cells infiltration in human tumors

Background: It is reported that TUBA1C contributed to the development and progression of several tumors. However, the role of TUBA1C in most cancers remains unclear. The study aimed to assess the prognostic values, potential biological functions, and immunity of TUBA1C in pan-cancer. Methods: : TUBA1C expression was assessed using pan-cancer data of 33 cancer types from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) database. The clinical features and prognostic roles of TUBA1C were assessed using TCGA cohort. cBioPortal database was used to examine TUBA1C mutations in pan-cancer. The relationship between TUBA1C expression and patients’ prognosis was performed by univariate Cox hazard regression. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of TUBA1C was conducted using the R software. we applied ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithm to assess the stromal score, immune score, and the infiltrating levels of immune cells from published study and ImmuCellAI database. Results: : Our results showed that TUBA1C was highly expressed in most tumors. High TUBA1C expression was associated with poor overall survival (OS) and disease-specific survival (DSS) in various tumors. GSEA analysis showed that TUBA1C expression was closely related to immune regulation-related signaling pathways. Besides, tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) were the dominating immune cell positively correlated with TUBA1C expression in most tumors. In addition, TUBA1C expression was positively associated with tumor mutation burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI), and mainly immunosuppressive genes such as PD-L1, PD-1, CD244, TIGIT, TGFB1, and TGFBR1 in several tumors. Conclusion: Our results indicated that TUBA1C was associated with poor prognosis in tumors. TUBA1C might be a valuable prognostic biomarker and a potential target for immunotherapy.