AUNIP was a candidate marker for prognosis and immunology in pan-cancer

Our plain-English summary of AUNIP was a candidate marker for prognosis and immunology in pan-cancer, by X. Guo, T. Liu, N. Li, et al (3 Biotech, 2025).

The study

• Authors: X. Guo, T. Liu, N. Li, L. Jin
• Journal: 3 Biotech
• Published: 2025;15(6):177
• Cited by: 1 article, as counted by NIH iCite
• Read it: PubMed · Publisher · Free full text

Abstract

AUNIP (Aurora kinase A[Aurora-A] and ninein-interacting protein), is a key factor regulating the end-state of DNA cleavage. It has been reported that AUNIP affects the progression of some tumors; however, the molecular functions involved in AUNIP remain unknown. We employed some databases, such as TCGA, GTEx, TIMER, GEPIA2, cBioportal, and GSCALite, to study AUNIP gene expression, prognosis, gene variation, and drug sensitivity. The relationship between AUNIP and clinicopathological information was explored using Wilcoxon test. The association between AUNIP and TMB, MSI, immunocyte infiltration, and immune checkpoints were analyzed using Spearman correlation analysis. We employed GSEA to research the functional mechanisms involved in AUNIP for pan-cancer. Moreover, we conducted immunohistochemistry (IHC) to investigate AUNIP difference expression between liver hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) and normal tissues. The Chisq test was used to study the correlation of AUNIP with clinical characteristics. AUNIP was highly expressed in majority of tumors and IHC analysis demonstrated that AUNIP expression was higher in LIHC than normal tissues. AUNIP overexpression had adverse outcomes in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), brain lower grade glioma (LGG), LIHC, mesothelioma (MESO), and sarcoma (SARC). Furthermore, high AUNIP expression led to unfavorable prognosis in LIHC. AUNIP was associated with T stage, N stage, and clinicopathological analysis in several cancers and AUNIP expression had a correlation with histologic grade in LIHC by IHC. Mutation analysis showed that AUNIP was the highest frequency of genetic changes in cholangiocarcinoma (CHOL). AUNIP was negatively associated with 30 small-molecule drugs that inhibit tumor development. AUNIP expression had association with TMB, MSI, immune cell infiltration, and immune checkpoints for various tumors. GSEA results suggested that AUNIP mainly participated in the cell cycle, DNA replication, mismatch repair, and homologous recombination.Pan-cancer study considered AUNIP as a potential prognostic marker and high latent diagnostic biomarker.

© The Author(s) 2025.

In plain English

This computer analysis of public cancer databases did not study or mention asbestos. The authors examined a gene, AUNIP, in 33 tumor types, comparing tumors with normal tissue using TCGA and GTEx data. They also stained tissue from 44 liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma) cases from a hospital in Zhejiang, China. AUNIP expression was higher than in normal tissue in most tumor types. When patients were split at the median AUNIP level, higher expression was linked to poorer overall and disease-free survival in seven cancers. The authors focused on five of these, including mesothelioma (MESO), and set aside two whose AUNIP levels did not differ significantly from normal tissue. Survival figures appear only in graphs. In mesothelioma, AUNIP was positively correlated with microsatellite instability but was not associated with immune checkpoints. In the liver cancer samples, AUNIP level was associated with tumor grade (P 0.03), not with age, gender or stage. The authors concluded that AUNIP was a potential prognostic and diagnostic marker. They noted that, apart from staining to confirm high AUNIP in liver cancer, their work rested on database analysis. Biological experiments were still needed to test how AUNIP acts in tumors.

We wrote this plain-English summary from the full article with the help of AI, and a second AI model checked each sentence against the article. It is not the authors' wording; the abstract and the article are their own account.

What the study did and found

• Design: Bioinformatics (pan-cancer database) analysis, with immunohistochemistry staining of liver cancer tissue
• Who was studied: Public database data on 33 tumor types (TCGA) with normal tissue (GTEx), including mesothelioma (MESO). Also 44 hepatocellular carcinoma cases with paracancerous tissue from Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital, China. No study dates are given.
• Exposure: No asbestos or other environmental or occupational exposure was studied. The study examined expression of the AUNIP gene in tumors.
• Main results:
  • In the combined TCGA and GTEx data, AUNIP expression was higher than in normal tissue in 22 tumor types and lower in KIRC, LAML, PCPG and TGCT. Mesothelioma is not in either list.
  • With patients split at the median AUNIP expression, both overall survival and disease-free survival were better with low than with high AUNIP expression in seven cancers: ACC, KIRP, LGG, LIHC, MESO, PRAD and SARC. No survival numbers are given in the text.
  • Because AUNIP expression in KIRP and PRAD did not differ significantly from normal tissue, the authors concluded that AUNIP was related to overall and disease-free survival in five cancers: ACC, LGG, LIHC, MESO and SARC.
  • AUNIP was positively correlated with microsatellite instability (MSI) in BLCA, LUSC, MESO, SARC and STAD.
  • In mesothelioma, AUNIP was not associated with immune checkpoints.
  • In mesothelioma and ten other tumor types, AUNIP was not associated with stromal, immune or ESTIMATE scores.
  • AUNIP was positively linked with Th2 immune cells in 30 tumor types.
  • In the 44 liver cancer cases, AUNIP expression was associated with histologic grade (chi-square 4.54, P 0.03). Among grade G1 + G2 tumors, 13 had low and 9 had high expression. Among G3 tumors, 6 had low and 16 had high expression. Expression was not associated with age, gender or pathologic stage.
  • In the liver cancer cases, patients in the high-expression group had worse prognosis on Kaplan–Meier analysis.
  • AUNIP expression was negatively correlated with the IC50 values of 30 drugs in tumor cell lines.
• The authors' conclusion: The authors concluded that AUNIP was a potential prognostic marker and a likely diagnostic biomarker across cancers.
• Limitations the authors state:
  • The findings came from bioinformatics, with staining used only to confirm overexpression in liver cancer. No biological experiment was done to verify them.
  • More experiments are needed to validate how AUNIP acts in inducing tumors.

Topics

Medical terms in this study, explained in our Lexicon: Prognosis, Immunohistochemistry, Carcinoma, Mesothelioma, Sarcoma, Biomarker.

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