Overexpression of ferroptosis-related gene NFS1 correlates with gastric cancer progression and tumor immune infiltration

Abstract Gastric cancer (GC) is one of the malignant tumors with the highest incidence in the world, however finding better biomarkers remains a challenge. Cysteine desulfurase (NFS1) has been found to regulate the biological functions of a variety of tumors, but the study in GC remains to be explored. In our study, NFS1 expression was predicted by TCGA, GTEx, UALCAN, and HPA databases. And immunohistochemistry (IHC) was performed in 146 pairs of GC tissues and paired adjacent tissues to verify NFS1 expression. We found that NFS1 was up-regulated in GC tissues, which can be effectively diagnosed and dynamically monitored to evaluate the prognosis of GC patients. The results of immunohistochemistry showed that the strong positive immunostaining was related to the degree of differentiation and the depth of invasion of GC patients. Functional enrichment analysis indicated that NFS1 might play a role in ferroptosis and tumor microenvironment (TME), including regulating epithelial-mesenchymal transition, stromal response, and immune response. Moreover, the aberrant NFS1 expression was related to TMB, MSI, DNSss, RNAss, TME score in GC and drug sensitivity. In addition, in the NFS1 and immune correlation analysis, it was found that the expression level of NFS1 was correlated with a large number of immune cells and immune microenvironment characteristics. Our findings indicated that NFS1 was a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker associated with ferroptosis and TME, providing a new target for drug therapy and immunotherapy of specific cancers.