The Role of Aspartoacylase Gene Expression on the Onset and Prognosis of Stomach Adenocarcinoma Patients

Abstract

Background: Stomach adenocarcinoma is a high risk cancer of the digestive system. Aspartoacylase (ASPA) has been indicated to involve in the progression of various cancers. We herein aimed to evaluate the role of ASPA in stomach adenocarcinoma patients. Methods: Stomach adenocarcinoma patient data was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus databases. DEseq2 and limma package of R- were used to run the differential expression analyses. Significance difference was determined by Wilcox method. Survival analyses was performed using Survival and survminer packages. CIBERSORT was used to assess the immune cell infiltration. Functional enrichment analyses were performed on the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) using clusterProfiler package of R. Results: In both databases, ASPA was significantly lower in stomach adenocarcinoma samples than in normal samples (p < 0.001). ASPA expression increased gradually with the grade of stomach adenocarcinoma. Patients with higher ASPA expression showed poorer overall survival compared to those patients with lower ASPA expression (p < 0.01). ASPA was an independent prognostic factor. Ten types of immune cells, such as T cells regulatory, showed significant differential infiltration between high and low ASPA expression stomach adenocarcinoma patients. In total 3192 DEGs were identified between high and low ASPA expression stomach adenocarcinoma patients, which were significantly enriched in 1362 gene ontology (GO) terms and 86 Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways. Conclusions: Lower ASPA expression is associated with the onset of stomach adenocarcinoma. High ASPA expressed stomach adenocarcinoma patients showed unfavorable overall survival. Our findings give new insights about the pathogenic and diagnostic role of ASPA in stomach adenocarcinoma.