Potential Prognostic and Therapeutic Target of CDC7 in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains difficult to treat, owing to the lack of effective predictor and therapeutic targets. CDC7 is a critical gene that regulates cell cycle and highly expressed in patients with HCC. However, it remains unclear whether the expression levels of CDC7 predict survival for patients with HCC and direct impact on the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME). Methods: We then downloaded CDC7 expression and clinical characteristics from public databases and used R language and tools online for statistical analysis and graphical work. Results: Multivariate analyses showed that both high CDC7 expression and low immune scores was strongly correlated with worse disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS). CDC7 expression was positively correlated with infiltrating levels of CD4+ T cells, macrophages, dendritic cells (DCs) and M2 macrophages in HCC. Interestingly, analyses showed the high CDC7 expression was also closely related to the genes which contribute to HCC metastasis. Conclusions: Our study now, for the first time, provides an explanation of CDC7 with clinical characteristics and immune-related factors. High CDC7 expression might promote HCC metastasis and M2-polarized macrophages resulted in a poor prognosis. The predicting nomograms may help to estimate the survival of patients.