Analysis of expression pattern and prognostic value of the HPSE in breast cancer through CD274/CTLA-4 immune checkpoint proteins

Heparanase (HPSE), an endoglycosidase that cleaves heparan sulfate, regulates various biological processes related to tumor progression. In the study, we further explored the prognostic value of HPSE through the TCGA database. Our model demonstrated that the integrating of HPSE with the clinical stage effectively predicts patients' survival time, highlighting high HPSE expression as a prognostic risk factor for breast cancer. Then the ROC curve (AUC of 1 year = 0.747, AUC of 3 years = 0.731) and DCA curve illustrated the satisfactory discriminative capacity of our model, emphasizing its valuable clinical applicability. Immune-related results showed that HPSE correlates strongly with immune infiltrating cells, immune-related genes, and the anti-cancer immunity cycle. In vivo studies have demonstrated that HPSE in breast cancer is associated with increased expression of immune checkpoint proteins CD274 and CTLA-4 and is positively correlated with the pro-inflammatory cytokine TNF-α. Meanwhile, we analyzed the 11 types of drugs that are sensitive to the HPSE gene. Our results show that HPSE can serve as an effective biomarker to predict the prognosis of breast cancer patients and reflect the impact of immunotherapy.