Activation of hepatic embryonic stem cell factors are essential biopredictive markers for hepatocellular carcinoma

Objective: To investigate the activation of hepatic embryonic stem cell factor in hepatocellular carcinoma and its characteristic effect on hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods Based on mRNA-seq data of hepatocellular carcinoma and matched clinical data in the TCGA database, and mRNA-seq data of hepatic embryonic stem cell genes screened by laboratory sequencing, we used the R package and some online analysis tools to find activated hepatic embryonic stem cell genes in hepatocellular carcinoma, and used support vector machine (SVM) and LASSO regression analysis to further screen out significantly differentially expressed hepatic embryonic stem cell genes, and to investigate their functional characteristics and clinical significance in hepatocellular carcinoma based on the expression of these hepatic embryonic stem cell genes. Finally, the expression of five embryonic stem cell factors in HCC tissues was detected based on immunohistochemical methods. Results Five liver embryonic stem cell genes, TYW3/CKLF/P2RY6/TUBA1B and RSU1 were significantly upregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma, showed good diagnostic efficacy for hepatocellular carcinoma, and were significantly associated with a poorer survival prognosis of patients. The prognostic model based on the five hepatic embryonic cell genes showed good predictive efficacy and has good potential for clinical application, immunohistochemical expression validation results also showed high expression of TYW3/CKLF/P2RY6/TUBA1B, and RSU1 in HCC, and were highly expressed in HCC and mainly expressed in the cytoplasm. Conclusion The activation of five hepatic germ cell genes, TYW3/CKLF/P2RY6/TUBA1B, and RSU1 are important diagnostic targets and prognostic markers for hepatocellular carcinoma, which significantly correlated with patient clinical prognosis. And the prognostic model of HCC based on TYW3/CKLF/P2RY6/TUBA1B, and RSU1 has a good clinical application potential for hepatocellular carcinoma.