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. 2021 Jun 11;12(16):4762-4773.
doi: 10.7150/jca.50502. eCollection 2021.

Prognostic and immunological role of CD36: A pan-cancer analysis

Yong-Jian Chen  1 , Wei-Xin Liao  2 , Shao-Zhuo Huang  3 , Yun-Fang Yu  4 , Jing-Yun Wen  1 , Jie Chen  1 , Da-Gui Lin  5 , Xiang-Yuan Wu  1 , Nan Jiang  6 , Xing Li  1
Affiliations

Prognostic and immunological role of CD36: A pan-cancer analysis

Yong-Jian Chen et al. J Cancer. .

Abstract

CD36 plays a critical role in lipid metabolism, which is closely associated with human immunity. However, the role of CD36 in cancer remains unclear. We performed a pan-cancer analysis to elucidate the potential role of CD36 in cancer by investigating its prognostic value and current predictors for the efficacy of immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) in multiple cancer types. CD36 expression in cancer cell lines, tumor tissue, and their adjacent normal tissues displayed heterogeneity among different cancers. Immunohistochemistry was used to detect CD36 expression and confirmed the results. CD36 expression significantly affects prognosis in the six cancer types. High CD36 expression was marginally associated with poorer prognosis in four of them and improved prognosis in the remaining two types. CD36 expression was significantly correlated with the 6 immune infiltrates in most cancer types. In addition, CD36 gene expression was positively correlated with Stromal score, Immune score, and ESTIMATE score. A total of 47 immune checkpoint genes were collected and their relationship with CD36 expression was analyzed. CD36 expression was significantly associated with multiple stimulatory and inhibitory checkpoint molecules with a disease-specific pattern. As to the genes reported to positively relate to the efficacy of ICIs, CD36 expression was positively correlated with most of them but negatively associated with a small proportion of cancer type-specific patterns. Concerning the genes negatively related to the efficacy of ICIs, CD36 expression was positively correlated with NRP1 and TNFSF15 in multiple cancers. CD36 expression was negatively correlated with tumor neoantigen burden in most cancer types. However, CD36 expression was negatively correlated with tumor mutation burden in most cancer types. The correlation between CD36 expression and the four methyltransferases was also significant in multiple cancers, but also with a cancer type-specific pattern. In summary, the current study found CD36 expression and its prognostic value in multiple cancer types. In addition, the expression of CD36 was significantly associated with current predictors for the efficacy of ICIs. The practical application value of CD36 is disease specific.

Keywords: Biomarker; CD36; Immunotherapy; Pan-cancer analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interest exists.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
CD36 expression in different types of tissue or cancer. CD36 expression in (A) 31 types of tissue; (B) 21 types of cancer cell lines; and (C) 27 types of cancer. TPM, Transcripts Per Kilobase of exon model per Million mapped reads. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Immunohistochemistry analysis of the expression of CD36 in tumor tissues. (A) Typical results of one pair of samples; (B) statistical analysis. *p<0.05, **p<0.01, ***p<0.001.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Prognostic value of CD36 expression. (A) Univariate Cox regression analysis of overall survival in pan-cancer. Prognostic value of CD36 in (B) colon adenocarcinoma (COAD); (C) esophageal carcinoma (ESCA); (D) kidney renal clear cell carcinoma (KIRC); (D) pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD); (D) rectum adenocarcinoma (READ); and (D) stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD) by Kaplan-Meier analysis. HR, hazard ratio; CI, confidence interval.
Figure 4
Figure 4
The association between CD36 expression and immunity. The association of CD36 expression with (A) immune infiltration, (B) immune score, and (C) immune checkpoint genes.
Figure 5
Figure 5
The association between CD36 expression and neoantigen burden or tumor mutation burden. The association of CD36 expression with (A) neoantigen burden and (B) tumor mutation burden.
Figure 6
Figure 6
The association between CD36 expression and DNA methylation.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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