CDC42—a promising target of glioma treatment related to Treg cell proliferation

Abstract

Glioma is the worst prognostic neoplasm in the central nervous system. A polarity-regulating GTPase in cells, which is called CdC42, has been proven that its overactivation is tightly connected to the high malignancy of tumor. The RNA-seq and protein expression of CDC42 in tumor and comparison tissues were analyzed based on the online tools, CDC42 is remarkably boosted in tumor tissue compared to controls. 600 patients in the analysis set from the TCGA database and 654 patients in the validation set from the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) database were adopted. The expression of CDC42 in various clinicopathological features was analyzed, including differential expression, survival analysis, GO and KEGG analysis, immune infiltration, correlated signaling pathway. It was found that CDC42 could be a potential biomarker of glioma transcriptional subtyping. The enrichment of CDC42 was shown to be an independent indicator of poor prognosis for glioma by Cox analysis and KM curves.Additionally, the concentration extent of CDC42 was closely related to immune infiltration, immune checkpoint inhibitors, and Treg cell markers (CD4, CD25, CD127). Further GSEA analysis demonstrated that CDC42 was significantly connected with the differentiation, migration and proliferation of T regulatory (Treg) cell through the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway.