Prognosis prediction ability and prospective biological mechanisms of WDHD1 in hepatocellular carcinoma tissues

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant tumor with complex pathogenesis. In HCC, the possible roles of transcriptional factor WD repeat and HMG-box DNA binding protein 1 (WDHD1) remain unclear. Hence, our study is aimed at verifying the prognosis prediction ability and potential bio-logical mechanisms of WDHD1 in HCC. Results: In this study, a total of 7171 clinical samples were obtained to quantitatively analyze the protein and mRNA expression levels of WDHD1 by using immunohistochemistry, gene microarrays, and high-throughput sequencing technologies. The result of in-house immunohistochemistry assay indicated that WDHD1 protein was remarkably overexpressed in HCC tissues compared with the non-HCC tissues (AUC > 0.99, the single Standardized Mean Difference [SMD] = 4.46). The overexpression trend of WDHD1 was validated by the comprehensive analysis based on a total of 4004 HCC tissues and 3167 con-trols (SMD = 1.333; AUC = 0.91). Moreover, the higher WDHD1 expression resulted in the poorer progno-sis of HCC, as assessed by overall survival and relapse-free survival analyses (pooled hazard ratios > 1). WDHD1-coexpressed genes were screened out for enrichment analyses to enquire the prospective signal -ing pathways of WDHD1 in HCC and to probe the potential transcriptional targets of WDHD1. The WDHD1-coexpressed genes were mainly involved in the division process of chromosome and cell nucleus in HCC. UBA52 was identified as a crucial target of WDHD1. Conclusions: WDHD1 may act as an oncogene in HCC and it has the potential to become a novel marker for predicting the prognosis of HCC patients, which may benefit from the early intervention of HCC. (c) 2021 Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).