Play all audios:
ABSTRACT Multiple transcript isoforms of genes can be formed by processing and modifying the 5′ and 3′ ends of RNA. Herein, the aim of this study is to uncover the characteristics of RNA
processing modification (RPM) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and to identify novel biomarkers and potential targets for treatment. Firstly, integrated bioinformatics analysis was carried
out to identify risk prognostic RPM regulators (RPMRs). Then, we used these RPMRs to identify subtypes of HCC and explore differences in immune microenvironment and cellular function
improvement pathways between the sub-types. Finally, we used the principal component analysis algorithms to estimate RPMscore, which were applied to 5 cohorts. Lower RPMscore among patients
correlated with a declined survival rate, increased immune infiltration, and raised expression of immune checkpoints, aligning with the “immunity tidal model theory”. The RPMscore exhibited
robust, which was validated in multiple datasets. Mechanistically, low RPMscore can create an immunosuppressive microenvironment in HCC by manipulating tumor-associated macrophages.
Preclinically, patients with high RPMscore might benefit from immunotherapy. The RPMscore is helpful in clustering HCC patients with distinct prognosis and immunotherapy. Our RPMscore model
can help clinicians to select personalized therapy for HCC patients, and RPMscore may act a part in the development of HCC. Access through your institution Buy or subscribe This is a preview
of subscription content, access via your institution ACCESS OPTIONS Access through your institution Subscribe to this journal Receive 6 digital issues and online access to articles $119.00
per year only $19.83 per issue Learn more Buy this article * Purchase on SpringerLink * Instant access to full article PDF Buy now Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated
during checkout ADDITIONAL ACCESS OPTIONS: * Log in * Learn about institutional subscriptions * Read our FAQs * Contact customer support SIMILAR CONTENT BEING VIEWED BY OTHERS RNA-SEQ
PROFILING REVEALS PBMC RNA AS A POTENTIAL BIOMARKER FOR HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA Article Open access 07 September 2021 TMEM101 EXPRESSION AND ITS IMPACT ON IMMUNE CELL INFILTRATION AND
PROGNOSIS IN HEPATOCELLULAR CARCINOMA Article Open access 30 December 2024 A-TO-I RNA CO-EDITING PREDICTS CLINICAL OUTCOMES AND IS ASSOCIATED WITH IMMUNE CELLS INFILTRATION IN HEPATOCELLULAR
CARCINOMA Article Open access 09 July 2024 DATA AVAILABILITY The datasets generated for this study can be found in the GEO database (GSE14520, GSE36376, GSE76427, GSE20140, GSE27150,
GSE140901; https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/), and UCSC Xena website (https://gdc.xenahubs.net). REFERENCES * Siegel RL, Miller KD, Wagle NS, Jemal A. Cancer statistics, 2023. CA: a cancer J
Clin. 2023;73:17–48. Google Scholar * Vogel A, Meyer T, Sapisochin G, Salem R, Saborowski A. Hepatocellular carcinoma. Lancet (Lond, Engl). 2022;400:1345–62. Article CAS Google Scholar
* Yang JD, Hainaut P, Gores GJ, Amadou A, Plymoth A, Roberts LR. A global view of hepatocellular carcinoma: trends, risk, prevention and management. Nat Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol.
2019;16:589–604. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Sangro B, Sarobe P, Hervás-Stubbs S, Melero I. Advances in immunotherapy for hepatocellular carcinoma. Nat Rev
Gastroenterol Hepatol. 2021;18:525–43. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Llovet JM, Castet F, Heikenwalder M, Maini MK, Mazzaferro V, Pinato DJ, et al. Immunotherapies for
hepatocellular carcinoma. Nat Rev Clin Oncol. 2022;19:151–72. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Zhu AX, Finn RS, Edeline J, Cattan S, Ogasawara S, Palmer D, et al. Pembrolizumab in
patients with advanced hepatocellular carcinoma previously treated with sorafenib (KEYNOTE-224): a non-randomised, open-label phase 2 trial. Lancet Oncol. 2018;19:940–52. Article PubMed
Google Scholar * Gok Yavuz B, Hasanov E, Lee SS, Mohamed YI, Curran MA, Koay EJ, et al. Current Landscape and Future Directions of Biomarkers for Immunotherapy in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.
J Hepatocell carcinoma. 2021;8:1195–207. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Ayuso C, Rimola J, Vilana R, Burrel M, Darnell A, García-Criado Á, et al. Diagnosis and staging of
hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC): current guidelines. Eur J Radiol. 2018;101:72–81. Article PubMed Google Scholar * Reyes A, Huber W. Alternative start and termination sites of
transcription drive most transcript isoform differences across human tissues. Nucleic acids Res. 2018;46:582–92. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Gruber AJ, Zavolan M. Alternative
cleavage and polyadenylation in health and disease. Nat Rev Genet. 2019;20:599–614. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Tan S, Zhang M, Shi X, Ding K, Zhao Q, Guo Q, et al. CPSF6 links
alternative polyadenylation to metabolism adaption in hepatocellular carcinoma progression. J Exp Clin Cancer Res: CR. 2021;40:85. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar *
Chen SL, Zhu ZX, Yang X, Liu LL, He YF, Yang MM, et al. Cleavage and Polyadenylation Specific Factor 1 Promotes Tumor Progression via Alternative Polyadenylation and Splicing in
Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Front cell Dev Biol. 2021;9:616835. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Zeng X, Liao G, Li S, Liu H, Zhao X, Li S, et al. Eliminating METTL1-mediated
accumulation of PMN-MDSCs prevents hepatocellular carcinoma recurrence after radiofrequency ablation. Hepatol (Baltim, Md). 2023;77:1122–38. Article Google Scholar * Zhao S, Ye Z, Stanton
R. Misuse of RPKM or TPM normalization when comparing across samples and sequencing protocols. RNA (N.Y, N.Y). 2020;26:903–9. Article CAS Google Scholar * Parker HS, Leek JT, Favorov AV,
Considine M, Xia X, Chavan S, et al. Preserving biological heterogeneity with a permuted surrogate variable analysis for genomics batch correction. Bioinforma (Oxf, Engl). 2014;30:2757–63.
CAS Google Scholar * Mariathasan S, Turley SJ, Nickles D, Castiglioni A, Yuen K, Wang Y, et al. TGFβ attenuates tumour response to PD-L1 blockade by contributing to exclusion of T cells.
Nature. 2018;554:544–8. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Ritchie ME, Phipson B, Wu D, Hu Y, Law CW, Shi W, et al. Limma powers differential expression analyses for
RNA-sequencing and microarray studies. Nucleic acids Res. 2015;43:e47. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Wilkerson MD, Hayes DN. ConsensusClusterPlus: a class discovery tool
with confidence assessments and item tracking. Bioinforma (Oxf, Engl). 2010;26:1572–3. CAS Google Scholar * Wu T, Hu E, Xu S, Chen M, Guo P, Dai Z, et al. clusterProfiler 4.0: A universal
enrichment tool for interpreting omics data. Innov (Camb (Mass)). 2021;2:100141. CAS Google Scholar * Yoshihara K, Shahmoradgoli M, Martínez E, Vegesna R, Kim H, Torres-Garcia W, et al.
Inferring tumour purity and stromal and immune cell admixture from expression data. Nat Commun. 2013;4:2612. Article PubMed Google Scholar * Finotello F, Trajanoski Z. Quantifying
tumor-infiltrating immune cells from transcriptomics data. Cancer Immunol, Immunother: CII. 2018;67:1031–40. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Newman AM, Liu CL, Green MR, Gentles AJ,
Feng W, Xu Y, et al. Robust enumeration of cell subsets from tissue expression profiles. Nat methods. 2015;12:453–7. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Aran D, Hu Z,
Butte AJ. xCell: digitally portraying the tissue cellular heterogeneity landscape. Genome Biol. 2017;18:220. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Subramanian A, Tamayo P,
Mootha VK, Mukherjee S, Ebert BL, Gillette MA, et al. Gene set enrichment analysis: a knowledge-based approach for interpreting genome-wide expression profiles. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA.
2005;102:15545–50. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Su Y, Huang J, Hu J. m(6)A RNA Methylation Regulators Contribute to Malignant Progression and Have Clinical
Prognostic Impact in Gastric Cancer. Front Oncol. 2019;9:1038. Article PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Wang X, Zhang S, Han K, Wang L, Liu X. Induction of Apoptosis by Matrine
Derivative ZS17 in Human Hepatocellular Carcinoma BEL-7402 and HepG2 Cells through ROS-JNK-P53 Signalling Pathway Activation. Int J Mol Sci. 2022;23:15991. Article CAS PubMed PubMed
Central Google Scholar * Li XY, Cui X, Xie CQ, Wu Y, Song T, He JD, et al. Andrographolide causes p53-independent HCC cell death through p62 accumulation and impaired DNA damage repair.
Phytomed: Int J Phytother phytopharmacol. 2023;121:155089. Article CAS Google Scholar * Tang B, Zhu J, Wang Y, Chen W, Fang S, Mao W, et al. Targeted xCT-mediated Ferroptosis and
Protumoral Polarization of Macrophages Is Effective against HCC and Enhances the Efficacy of the Anti-PD-1/L1 Response. Adv Sci (Weinh, Baden-Wurtt, Ger). 2023;10:e2203973. Google Scholar *
Chen Q, Zheng W, Guan J, Liu H, Dan Y, Zhu L, et al. SOCS2-enhanced ubiquitination of SLC7A11 promotes ferroptosis and radiosensitization in hepatocellular carcinoma. Cell Death Differ.
2023;30:137–51. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Jiang N, Yu Y, Wu D, Wang S, Fang Y, Miao H, et al. HLA and tumour immunology: immune escape, immunotherapy and immune-related adverse
events. J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2023;149:737–47. Article PubMed Google Scholar * Zhan X, Wu R, Kong XH, You Y, He K, Sun XY, et al. Elevated neutrophil extracellular traps by
HBV-mediated S100A9-TLR4/RAGE-ROS cascade facilitate the growth and metastasis of hepatocellular carcinoma. Cancer Commun (Lond, Engl). 2023;43:225–45. Article Google Scholar * Zhou C,
Weng J, Liu C, Liu S, Hu Z, Xie X, et al. Disruption of SLFN11 Deficiency-Induced CCL2 Signaling and Macrophage M2 Polarization Potentiates Anti-PD-1 Therapy Efficacy in Hepatocellular
Carcinoma. Gastroenterology. 2023;164:1261–78. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Jiang Y, Hong K, Zhao Y, Xu K. Emerging role of deubiquitination modifications of programmed
death-ligand 1 in cancer immunotherapy. Front Immunol. 2023;14:1228200. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Yuan X, Zhou J, Zhou L, Huang Z, Wang W, Qiu J, et al.
Apoptosis-Related Gene-Mediated Cell Death Pattern Induces Immunosuppression and Immunotherapy Resistance in Gastric Cancer. Front Genet. 2022;13:921163. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central
Google Scholar * Ma P, Zou C, Xia S. Oncogenic signaling pathway mediated by Notch pathway-related genes induces immunosuppression and immunotherapy resistance in hepatocellular
carcinoma. Immunogenetics. 2022;74:539–57. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar * Zhou L, Xu G, Huang F, Chen W, Zhang J, Tang Y. Apoptosis related genes mediated molecular subtypes depict
the hallmarks of the tumor microenvironment and guide immunotherapy in bladder cancer. BMC Med Genomics. 2023;16:88. Article CAS PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Wang S, Chen L,
Liu W. Matrix stiffness-dependent STEAP3 coordinated with PD-L2 identify tumor responding to sorafenib treatment in hepatocellular carcinoma. Cancer cell Int. 2022;22:318. Article CAS
PubMed PubMed Central Google Scholar * Nie X, Chen W, Zhu Y, Huang B, Yu W, Wu Z, et al. B7-DC (PD-L2) costimulation of CD4(+) T-helper 1 response via RGMb. Cell Mol Immunol.
2018;15:888–97. Article CAS PubMed Google Scholar Download references FUNDING This research was supported by the Construction of Major Subject [Grant no. (YNZDXK202201, 2022-2025)] of
Huadu District People´s Hospital of Guangzhou; the construction project of inheritance studio of national famous and old traditional Chinese Medicine experts (Grant no.140000020132). AUTHOR
INFORMATION Author notes * These authors contributed equally: Xinhui Li, Shan Liu, Laibin Zou. AUTHORS AND AFFILIATIONS * Department of Oncology, Renmin Hospital, Hubei University of
Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, PR China Xinhui Li & Shan Liu * Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, Huadu District People´s Hospital of Guangzhou, The Third School of
Clinical Medicine, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510800, China Laibin Zou * Department of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Allergy, The third affiliated hospital of Sun Yet-sen
University, Guangzhou, 510800, China Min Dai * Department of Gastroenterology, Renmin Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Shiyan, Hubei, 442000, PR China Chaobei Zhu Authors * Xinhui Li
View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Shan Liu View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Laibin
Zou View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar * Min Dai View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar *
Chaobei Zhu View author publications You can also search for this author inPubMed Google Scholar CONTRIBUTIONS M.D. and X.H.L. conceived the project. S.L. acquired and processed raw
sequencing data. L.B.Z. performed data integration and conducted data analysis. X.H.L. and S.L. assisted in the interpretation of results. C.B.Z. wrote the manuscript. All authors read and
approved the final manuscript. CORRESPONDING AUTHORS Correspondence to Min Dai or Chaobei Zhu. ETHICS DECLARATIONS COMPETING INTERESTS The authors declare no competing interests. ETHICAL
APPROVAL The study was approved by the ethical committee in the Renmin Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, and conducted under the guidance of the Declaration of Helsinki. ADDITIONAL
INFORMATION PUBLISHER’S NOTE Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION SUPPLEMENTARY
FIGURE SUPPLEMENTARY TABLE RIGHTS AND PERMISSIONS Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with
the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable
law. Reprints and permissions ABOUT THIS ARTICLE CITE THIS ARTICLE Li, X., Liu, S., Zou, L. _et al._ RNA processing modification mediated subtypes illustrate the distinctive features of
tumor microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinoma. _Genes Immun_ 25, 132–148 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41435-024-00265-8 Download citation * Received: 16 December 2023 * Revised: 26
February 2024 * Accepted: 27 February 2024 * Published: 12 March 2024 * Issue Date: April 2024 * DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41435-024-00265-8 SHARE THIS ARTICLE Anyone you share the
following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy to clipboard Provided by the Springer
Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative