C8B in Complement and Coagulation Cascades Signaling Pathway is a predictor for Survival in HBV-Related Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients

Abstract

Objective

The role of the complement and coagulation cascades signaling pathway in the pathogenesis of cancers remains uncertain. This study aimed to investigate the associations between enriched differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in this pathway and hepatitis B virus (HBV)-related hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients.

Materials and Methods

Clinical and gene expression data of the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) series profile GSE14520 were downloaded. The “Limma” package was used to screen the DEGs and the “clusterProfiler” package was used to identify the complement and coagulation cascades pathway and enriched significant genes. Cox regression analysis, the Kaplan–Meier method, and the nomogram model were used to address the correlations between significantly enriched DEGs in the complement and coagulation cascades pathway and HCC survival.

Results

A total of 220 HBV-related HCC patients were enrolled in this study. The complement and coagulation cascades pathway was significantly enriched by 37 DEGs (p-value < 0.05 and adjusted p-value < 0.05). Complement 8 beta chain (C8B) expression levels had protective effects on overall survival (OS) and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in HBV-related HCC patients. High levels of C8B contributed to favorable OS and RFS in this population (both p < 0.01), even after adjustment of clinicopathological characteristics including tumor node metastasis (TNM) staging, Barcelona Clinic liver cancer (BCLC) staging, gender, and fibrinogen beta chain (FGB) expression (all p < 0.05).

Conclusion

C8B in the complement and coagulation cascades signaling pathway serves as a predictive candidate for survival in HBV-related HCC patients.

Keywords:

• C8B
• FGB
• complement and coagulation cascades
• hepatocellular carcinoma
• survival

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (81803901). The funders had no role in study design, data collection, and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Data Sharing Statement

Datasets of the current study are available from the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/, GSE14520). All the datasets are available from the corresponding author (Z.Y) in response to a reasonable request.

Author Contributions

All authors made substantial contributions to conception and design, acquisition of data, or analysis and interpretation of data; took part in drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content; agreed to submit to the current journal; gave final approval of the version to be published; and agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Disclosure

The authors declare no conflicts of interest in this work.