Comprehensive analysis of CCR7 as a biomarker for the diagnosis, prognosis, and immunity in pan-cancer

Abstract

Chemokine receptor 7 (CCR7), a member of the CCR family genes, encodes CCR to bind chemokines and exert multiple types of biological processes. It has been evident that CCR7 can play a crucial role in cancer development and progression. Our study has investigated the value of CCR7 expression in the diagnosis and prognosis and immunological signatures of CCR7. Through the utilization of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Genotype-Tissue Expression Project (GTEx), The Human Protein Atlas (HPA), TIMER, TISIDB, GSEA, GeneMANIA, The Cancer single-cell state Atlas (CancerSEA), UALCAN, Shiny Methylation Analysis Resource Tool (SMART), MethSurv, and cBioPortal database, we used bioinformatics methods to conduct pan-cancer analysis, including differential expression, clinical evaluation, tumor microenvironment (TME) and immune-related analysis, GSEA, functional association analysis, DNA mutation and methylation level, and microsatellite instability (MSI) and tumor mutation burden (TMB). Our results showed that the expression of CCR7 showed significant differentiation between tumor tissues and normal tissues. CCR7 had the potential to be a biomarker in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients. Moreover, the CCR7 expression was closely associated with immune cell infiltration, immune-related genes, TMB, MSI, and DNA mutation. Through GSEA, it was revealed that CCR7 had a strong correlation with multiple immunological functions. Overall, we testified that CCR7 could be a novel tool for the diagnosis and prognosis of cancer patients. Moreover, the correlation between CCR7 and TME and immunological processes elucidated the value of CCR7 as a target in cancer immunotherapy.