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. 2022 May 16:13:920911.
doi: 10.3389/fgene.2022.920911. eCollection 2022.

Uncovering BTB and CNC Homology1 (BACH1) as a Novel Cancer Therapeutic Target

Zheming Liu  1 , Jing Wang  2 , Huiyong Chen  3 , Zankai Wu  4 , Fuben Liao  1 , Sheng Wang  5 , Ting Zhu  6
Affiliations

Uncovering BTB and CNC Homology1 (BACH1) as a Novel Cancer Therapeutic Target

Zheming Liu et al. Front Genet. .

Abstract

BTB and CNC homology1 (BACH1), working as a transcriptional factor, is demonstrated to function on the regulation of epigenetic modifications by complex regulatory networks. Although BACH1 is reported as an oncogene, the overall analysis of its role remains lacking. In this study, we uncovered the capacity of BACH1 as a new pan-cancer therapeutic target. We found that BACH1 is highly expressed in abundant cancers and correlated with the poor prognosis of most cancers. The mutation sites of BACH1 varied in different cancer types and correlated to patients' prognoses. The tumor mutation burden (TMB) in four cancer species and up to six tumor infiltrated immune cells had a significant relevance with BACH1. The enrichment analysis showed that the BACH1-associated genes were significantly enriched in the pathways of PD-1/L1 expression, ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, T cell receptor, Th17 cell differentiation. We then demonstrated that BACH1 is positively correlated with the expression of many candidate genes, incluing SRPK2, GCLM, SLC40A1, and HK2 but negatively correlated with the expression of KEAP1 and GAPDH. Overall, our data shed light on BACH1's effect on latent utility in cancer targeting therapy.

Keywords: BTB and CNC homology1 (BACH1); immune cell infiltration; metabolism; therapeutic target; tumor mutation burden.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Pan-cancer expression landscape of BACH1. (A) The expression of BACH1 in 33 cancer tissues from the TCGA database (B) The expression of BACH1 in GTEx and TCGA database. (C) The expression level of BACH1 in primary cancer and normal tissue in the CPTAC database (D) The expression level of BACH1 phosphosites in different cancer tissues.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Expression of BACH1 and its association with prognosis in different cancers.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Pan-cancer Mutation Landscape of BACH1. (A) Distribution of BACH1 mutation types in different cancers (B) Common mutation sites of BACH1 in different cancers. (C) Common mutation sites of BACH1 in UCEC (D) The overall survival of UCEC patients with BACH1 mutation.
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
The relationship between BACH1 expression and somatic mutation. (A) The somatic mutation data of 33 cancer patients from the TCGA database (B) The relationship between BACH1 and TMB (C) Four cancer types in which BACH1 is associated with TMB.
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Correlation of the expression or mutation of BACH1 with immune infiltration. (A) Correlation of BACH1 Expression with Immune Infiltration (B) Correlation of BACH1 mutation with Immune Infiltration.
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of BACH1. (A) GO pathway enrichment analysis of BACH1 (B)-(C) KEGG pathway enrichment analysis of BACH1.
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
The correlation of BACH1 and metabolism-related genes.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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