Ring finger protein 157 is a prognostic biomarker and is associated with immune infiltrates in human breast cancer

Background: The protein encoded by ring finger protein 157 (RNF157) is known to function as an E3 ubiquitin ligase. However, whether the level of RNF157 expression in breast cancer correlates with prognosis and immune cell infiltration among breast cancer patients remains to be further explored. Methods: In this study, publicly available datasets were used for evaluating RNF157 expression in different tumors compared with normal samples. Several independent datasets were screened for investigating the relationship between RNF157 and breast cancer survival, different mutation profiles, and tumor immune cell infiltration. We conducted a pathway enrichment analysis to identify signaling pathways associated with RNF157. Results: Analysis of public and online databases revealed that RNF157 expression markedly decreased in breast cancer tissue samples compared to non-carcinoma counterparts. Consistently, immunohistochemistry assays also demonstrated this RNF157 down-regulation in breast cancer samples. RNF157 up-regulation could predict the improved survival of breast cancer cases. Further, different RNF157 expression level groups exhibited different mutational profiles. Pathway enrichment profiling of RNF157-related genes suggested its possible involvement in regulating breast cancer via the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway. RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data and genomic enrichment analysis showed that RNF157 downregulated several genes positively associated with the MAPK signaling pathway. We also explored RNF157 expression and immune cell infiltration in breast cancer and found that RNF157 mRNA levels were negatively related to non-T immune cell infiltration. Conclusion: According to our work, RNF157 may be a promising diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for breast cancer.