Abstract
BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer (PRAD) poses a significant threat to male health. The tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in its development process, yet the regulatory significance of specific extracellular matrix proteins such as Dermatopontin (DPT) in PRAD remains poorly understood. METHODS: A total of 534 PRAD transcriptome profiles were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE computational methods were used to quantify the presence of immune and stromal components. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified based on ImmuneScore and StromalScore, followed by Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses. DPT expression was analyzed in relation to overall survival, TNM staging, immune-related pathways using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), and tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TICs). RESULTS: A total of 454 DEGs overlapping between high ImmuneScore and StromalScore groups were enriched in immune-related processes and pathways. DPT expression was positively correlated with the survival of PRAD patients, especially the N Stage of PRAD. GSEA revealed that high DPT expression correlated with immune-related activities such as allograft rejection, apical junction, complement, and epithelial mesenchymal transition while low DPT expression was correlated with metabolic pathways such as E2f targets, G2m checkpoint, mitotic spindle, and mitorc1 signaling. Analysis of TICs showed that DPT expression was positively correlated with resting mast cells and neutrophils. Conversely, regulatory T cells, M1 macrophages, M2 macrophages, and resting dendritic cells exhibited negative correlations with DPT expression. CONCLUSIONS: DPT may serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in PRAD, potentially affecting the survival of PRAD patients by regulating the immune environment of TME. These findings provide new insights into the immunomodulatory role of DPT and its potential as a therapeutic target for PRAD.