AIM2 is a novel biomarker for predicting prognosis and immunotherapy response of clear cell renal cell carcinoma

Abstract Background As an indispensable component of the inflammasome, absent in melanoma 2 (AIM2) plays an essential role in the initiation of the innate immune response, while its effects on clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) still remain unclear. In this research, we aimed to evaluate the predictive value of AIM2 on prognosis and immunotherapy effects in patients suffering from ccRCC. Methods In this study, genomic and phenotypic data obtained from public databases and ccRCC patient samples from NanFang hospital were collected for exploring the correlation between AIM2 and ccRCC progression. Then we also investigated the association between AIM2 and tumor immune microenvironment of ccRCC patients. Finally, the efficacy of AIM2 was tested to predict the response to immunotherapy of ccRCC patients. Results Our study verified that AIM2 was significantly overexpressed in ccRCC tissues compared to adjacent normal tissues with the potential contributing factors including low methylation level and high copy number amplification level of AIM2 . AIM2 was an independent prognostic marker of ccRCC patients and significantly associated with higher malignancy. Further analysis suggested that AIM2 was implicated in tumor immune microenvironment (TIME), showing a closely positive association with most inhibitory immune checkpoints. Thus, we further elucidated that ccRCC patients with higher AIM2 mRNA expression levels had more sensitive immunotherapy responses. Conclusions This research determined the predictive value of AIM2 in predicting the prognostic and immunotherapy effects of ccRCC patients and revealed its potential to efficiently pick out certain patients that may benefit from cancer immunotherapy.