High expression of cuproptosis-related gene DLD in relation to good prognosis and immune cells infiltration in colon cancer

Abstract

Background Colon cancer (CC) is one of the diseases that pose a significant risk to human health. Cuproptosis is a newly discovered mechanism that regulates cell death, and DLD is an associated positive regulator of copper death. However, the role of DLD in the pathogenesis of colon cancer remains to be investigated. Materials and Methods We analyzed the expression of DLD in colon cancer from the University of Alabama at Birmingham Cancer data analysis Portal (UALCAN) database and the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database. Correlations between DLD expression and clinicopathological parameters were analyzed in UALCAN database. Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival curves were used to elucidate the relationship between DLD expression and survival time of colon cancer patients, which was validated in the GSE:39582 dataset. Then, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to explore the biological function of DLD. The relationship between DLD expression and cancer immune infiltration was analyzed using the Tumor Immunization Estimation Resource database (TIMER), single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA), and other immune infiltration methods. Results We found that DLD was downregulated in colon cancer samples and that increased DLD expression was associated with better overall survival. Functional annotation of 302 DLD co-expressed genes and 4731 DLD differentially expressed genes and including GO, KEGG and GSEA enrichment analysis.DLD is essentially involved in Metabolic pathways, Oxidative phosphorylation, cancer pathway and WNT signaling pathway. The most common mutated genes in colon cancer were different in high and low DLD groups. Tumor immune infiltration analysis revealed that DLD may recruit infiltrating immune cells and modulate immunity in colon cancer, thus affecting prognosis. Conclusion DLD plays a role in inducing cuproptosis and regulating immunity in colon cancer, which can be considered as a new biomarker for colon cancer.