ZC3H13 Can Serve as Potential Prognostic Biomarker and Therapeutic Target for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract Background: Recently, an increasing number of studies have revealed that N6-methyladenosine (m6A) functions as a significant post-transcriptional modification which plays a critical role in the occurrence and progression of enriched tumors by regulating coding and non-coding RNA biogenesis. However, the roles of m6A RNA modification in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remain largely unknown.Results: In this study, the expression levels, genetic variations, prognostic values and gene–gene interaction network of m6A-related genes in hepatocellular carcinoma were analyzed using the Oncomine, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA), cBioPortal, Kaplan–Meier plotter and GeneMANIA database. The results show that zinc finger CCCH-type containing 13 (ZC3H13) was significantly lowly expressed in Hepatocellular Carcinoma. Survival outcome analysis suggested that significant correlations occurred between ZC3H13 downregulation and poor overall survival (OS) and poor recurrence free survival (RFS) in patients with liver cancer. Whereupon, ZC3H13 was selected for analyzing the biological functions and pathways of its co-expressed genes via Metascape, and its correlation with immune system responses via the TISIDB database, respectively. Further analyses indicated that ZC3H13 may be involved in transcriptional misregulation in cancer. Additionally, ZC3H13 expression was significantly correlated with lymphocytes and immunomodulators. Conclusions: Therefore, ZC3H13 is a high candidate as a novel biomarker and therapeutic target for hepatocellular carcinoma.