HOXB2 Is a Prognostic Biomarker and Correlated with Immune Infiltration in Colorectal Cancer and Glioma

Abstract

Homeobox B2 (HOXB2) is a transcription factor that belongs to the homeobox family. Previous investigations have demonstrated that tumor prognosis was strongly linked to aberrant HOXB2 expression. However, the mechanism linking HOXB2 to the tumor microenvironment (TME) and prognosis has not been explored in detail. Three cohorts at different stages of colorectal cancer (GSE17536, GSE17537, GSE14333) demonstrated that elevated HOXB2 expression had significantly association with poorer overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS), and disease-free survival (DFS). Additionally, the poor prognosis in low grade glioma (LGG) (OS HR = 1.8, P-value = 0.00084; DFS HR = 1.5, P-value = 0.014) was associated with increased HOXB2 expression. Moreover, we also demonstrated that the correlation between HOXB2 expression with prognosis of gastric cancer, breast cancer, and liver cancer. What’s more, the results analyzed by TIMER further showed that HOXB2 expression was associated with immune infiltration level of colon adenocarcinoma (COAD), rectum adenocarcinoma (READ) and LGG, particularly B cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ cells. macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells (DCs). The positive correlation between HOXB2 expression and the expression of immune maker genes was also observed. The results of RT-qPCR were reliable and we supposed that HOXB2 expressing validation provided strong evidence for HOXB2 functioning as a novel prognosis biomarker. These findings suggested that poor prognosis and increased immune infiltration levels were found to be correlated with increased HOXB2 expression in multiple cancers, especially in COAD, READ and LGG. Furthermore, in COAD, LGG and READ, HOXB2 potentially regulates TAMs, DCs, T cell exhaustion, and Tregs. Therefore, HOXB2 can serve as a biomarker with special prognostic value and may be involved in the regulation of immune cell infiltration in patients with COAD, READ and LGG.