TRPV1 and its co‑expressed genes are associated with the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer. Transient receptor potential vanilloid 1 (TRPV1) is a nonselective Ca2+ channel protein widely expressed and plays a significant role in cancer initiation and progression. However, the biological significance of TRPV1 in HCC has not been systematically and comprehensively investigated. This study used deep data mining and transcriptomics analyses to describe the significance of TRPV1 expression and its association with HCC prognosis. Methods: Download the RNA expression of TRPV1 from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Genotype Tissue Expression Atlas (GTEx), Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER), and the UALCAN databases to examine the relationship between the expression of TRPV1 and the clinicopathological characteristics of HCC. The genetic alterations and frequency of TRPV1 were analyzed using the cBioPortal and COSMIC databases. The relationship between TRPV1 expression and immune infiltrates in HCC was analyzed on TIMER 2.0, TISIDB, and GEPIA databases. The data processing analysis is based on the R language. LinkedOmics was used for TRPV1 co-expression network analysis. Drug Sensitivity data from Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC). Results: TRPV1 mRNA expression was upregulated in HCC samples compared to normal liver tissues. Kaplan-Meier analysis demonstrated that high expression of TRPV1 is associated with better prognostic significance for overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in HCC patients. The expression of TRPV1 was also correlated with age, clinical stage and pathological grade. The mutation landscape analysis confirms that TRPV1 genetic alterations reached 6%, of which missense substitutions accounted for the highest proportion of 16.16%. The findings of the TIMER analysis indicated a correlation between immune cell infiltration and TRPV1 copy number alterations (CNA). The expression level of TRPV1 was positively correlated with the infiltration level of CD4+ T cells but negatively ...