884P - Prognostic value and immune characteristics of LGALS1 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

Background

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) is the sixth most common form of cancer in the world and the 5-year survival rate is approximately 60%. Searching for effective biomarkers to predict prognosis is urgently needed. LGALS1 belongs to a family of carbohydrate binding proteins which regulates a wide variety of tumor suppressors and tumor promoters. The present study aimed to analyze the prognostic value of LGALS1 and its association with the tumor immune microenvironment.

Methods

Gene expression profiles were retrieved from the Cancer Genomic Atlas (TCGA)-HNSC cohort (n = 563). We used GEPIA2 to study the expression of LGALS1 in HNSC compared to the normal tissue. We assessed the effect of LGALS1 expression on the overall survival (OS) in HNSC using the Kaplan Meier plotter. We used the TIMER 2.0 for immune inhibitory cell infiltrates analysis. We used the cBioPortal tool for tumor mutational burden (TMB). Enrichment analysis of function and signaling pathways of differentially co-expressed genes were performed by gene ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomics (KEGG) analysis using LinkedOmics.

Results

LGALS1 is differentially expressed and upregulated in HNSC compered to normal tissues (P < 0.001). Higher LGALS1 expression correlated with worse OS in HNSC patients (HR: 1.51, 95% CI: 1.15 - 1.98, P = 0.003). LGALS1 expression was positively correlated with the infiltration of macrophage (r = 0.229, P < 0.001), myeloid dendritic cells (r = 0.286, P < 0.001) and CD8+ cells (r = 0.129, P = 0.004), but negatively with B cells (r = -0.13, P = 0.004). TMB count was inversely associated with LGALS1 expression (r = -0.13, P = 0.004). GO analysis for LGALS1 co-expressed genes indicated a molecular function role in extracellular matrix structural constituent and biological process in extracellular structure organization with a cellular component in extracellular matrix.

Conclusions

Our results imply that high expression of LGALS1 is an indicator of poor prognosis in HNSC. This might be due to the infiltration of macrophage, myeloid dendritic cells, lower B cells and even though there were also higher CD8+ cells. However, further research is needed for a better understanding of the LGALS1 value in HNSC.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

The authors.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.