Fam46a Expression Is Elevated In Glioblastoma And Predicts Poor Prognosis Of Patients

Objective: To study the expression of FAM46A in glioblastoma (GBM) and analyze its significance in predicting the prognosis of patients.Materials and methods: mRNA expression and clinical data of patients with GBM were retrieved from ONCOMINE databases and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Immunohistochemistry was performed in a tissue microarray including 110 GBM cases and 12 normal controls to determine the expression of FAM46A protein. Then, Kaplan-Meier curve and Cox regression model were used to investigate the relationship between FAM46A expression and clinical outcome. Coexpressed genes of FAM46A were analyzed by Linked Omics, Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG).Results: Upregulated expression of FAM46A was found in both TCGA and our cohort. High FAM46A expression was associated with the poor prognosis of patients with GBM and could be identified as an independent risk factor for overall survival (HR = 1.652, p = 0.022). Further bioinformatics analysis revealed that FAM46A might be involved in cell motility and endoplasmic reticulum proteostasis and stress to promote GBM progression.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that increased expression of FAM46A in GBM is a novel biomarker for predicting poor outcome of patients and that targeting FAM46A may serve as a potential therapy for this disease.