Objective: Increasing evidence highlights the roles of N6-methyladenosine (m6A) and its regulators in oncogenesis. Herein, this study observed the associations of m6A regulators with breast cancer. Methods: RNA-seq profiles of breast cancer were retrieved from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The expression of m6A regulators was analyzed in tumor and normal tissues. Their expression correlations were analyzed by Spearson test. Overall survival (OS) analysis of these regulators was then presented. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed in high and low YTHDF1 expression groups. The correlations of YTHDF1 expression with immune cells and tumor mutation burden (TMB) were calculated in breast cancer samples. Somatic variation was assessed in high and low YTHDF1 expression groups. Results: Most of m6A regulators were abnormally expressed in breast cancer compared to normal tissues. At the mRNA levels, there were closely relationships between them. Among them, YTHDF1 up-regulation was significantly related to undesirable prognosis (p = 0.025). GSEA results showed that high YTHDF1 expression was associated with cancer-related pathways. Furthermore, YTHDF1 expression was significantly correlated with T cells CD4 memory activated, NK cells activated, monocytes, and macrophages. There were higher TMB scores in YTHDF1 up-regulation group than its down-regulation group. Missense mutation and non-sense mutation were the most frequent mutation types. Conclusion: Our findings suggested that dysregulated m6A regulator YTHDF1 was predictive of survival outcomes as well as response to immunotherapy of breast cancer, and were closely related to immune microenvironment.
Keywords: N6-methyladenosine; breast cancer; immune microenvironment; immunotherapy; regulators; somatic mutation.
Copyright © 2021 Hu, Pan, Wang, Ai, Yan, Tian, Jing, Tang and Jiang.