Abstract

Emerging evidence has revealed that promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger may contribute in several ways to the development and progression of cancer, but no pan-cancer analysis of its roles have been undertaken to date. Here, we set out to use bioinformatics techniques to comprehensively investigate the expression profiles and prognostic significance of promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger, as well as its relationship to clinic pathological parameters and immune cell infiltration. Promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger is significantly down regulated in various cancers, which has been found to be associated with patient prognosis. We also found that the under expression of promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger is often associated with poor overall survival and disease-specific survival in chromophobe renal cell carcinoma and renal clear cell carcinoma. Remarkably, promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger expression has been found to correlate with levels of infiltrating cells, the tumor mutational burden and microsatellite instability. Our pan-cancer analysis thus provided a deeper understanding of the functions of promyelocytic leukemia zinc finger in oncogenes and the metastasis of different cancers.