Background: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the seventh leading cause of cancer death worldwide, and its prognosis is poor. It has been reported that carbohydrate sulfotransferase 11 (CHST11) is associated with tumor progression in various cancers but rarely reported in PC. The aim of this study was to comprehensively investigate the clinical value of CHST11 in PC.
Methods: CHST11 gene expression analysis was conducted by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), and Human Protein Atlas (HPA) databases. Survival analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were performed to evaluate the prognostic significance of CHST11 based on TCGA and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) databases. Additionally, functional enrichment analysis was also performed. Moreover, single-sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (ssGSEA) and ESTIMATE algorithm were used to assess immune infiltration. Finally, the relationship between CHST11 expression and immune checkpoint gene levels was estimated by Spearman's correlation analysis.
Results: CHST11 was highly expressed in PC tissues compared with normal tissues, and the expression of CHST11 was related to T stage, N stage, and histological grade. The survival time of PC patients with CHST11 low-expression was significantly better than those with CHST11 high-expression. The areas under the ROC curve corresponding to 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival in the TCGA dataset were 0.573, 0.671, and 0.740, respectively, and those in the ICGC dataset were 0.588, 0.602, and 0.626, respectively. Functional enrichment analysis showed that CHST11 may be involved in the regulation of immune function. Finally, the level of CHST11 was significantly correlated with 22 types of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, immune and stromal scores, and 7 immune checkpoint genes.
Conclusions: High-expression of CHST11 was correlated with poor prognosis and tumor immune infiltration in PC. Moreover, CHST11 may act as a novel prognostic marker and potential therapeutic target of PC.