High Expression of COL10A1 Is an Independent Predictive Poor Prognostic Biomarker and Associated with Immune Infiltration in Advanced Gastric Cancer Microenvironment

Medical technology has become more and more sophisticated recently, which, however, fails to contribute to a better prognosis for patients suffering advanced gastric cancer (GC). Hence, new biomarkers specific to GC diagnosis and prognosis shall be identified urgently. This study screened differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between 375 GC samples and 32 paracancer tissue samples from TCGA datasets. The expression of Collagen type X alpha 1 (COL10A1) in GC was analyzed. The chi-square test assisted in analyzing the relevance of COL10A1 to the clinicopathologic characteristics. The Kaplan-Meier method helped to assess the survival curves and log-rank tests assisted in the examination of the differences. The Cox proportional hazard regression model served for analyzing the risk factors for GC. Then, we developed a nomogram that contained the COL10A1 expression and clinical information. Finally, how COL10A1 expression was associated with the immune infiltration was also evaluated. In this study, 7179 upregulated and 3771 downregulated genes were identified. Among them, COL10A1 expression was distinctly increased in GC specimens compared with nontumor specimens. High COL10A1 expression exhibited an obvious relation to tumor T and pathologic stage. ROC assays confirmed the diagnostic value of COL10A1 expression in screening GC samples from normal samples. Survival data displayed that patients with high COL10A1 expression exhibited a shorter OS and DSS than those with low COL10A1 expression. We obtained a predictive nomogram, which could better predict the COL10A1 expression by virtue of discrimination and calibration. The prognostic value of COL10A1 expression was further confirmed in GSE84426 datasets. Immune assays revealed that COL10A1 expression was associated with tumor-filtrating immune cells, like CD8 T cells, cytotoxic cells, DC, eosinophils, iDC, macrophages, mast cells, NK CD56dim cells, NK cells, pDC, T helper cells, Tem, Th1 cells, Th17 cells, and Treg. Overall, we firstly proved that COL10A1 may be a novel and valuable prognostic and diagnostic factor for GC patients. In addition, COL10A1 has potential to be an immune indicator in GC.