Abstract
We aimed to determine the prognostic significance of ZFP1 in gastric cancer (GC), its role in the immune microenvironment, and its potential as a therapeutic target using data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. ZFP1 overexpression was closely associated with tumour T stage and histological grade. Patients with GC and high ZFP1 expression had poor outcomes. Lower ZFP1 expression was associated with longer symptom-free intervals and disease-specific survival. Subgroup analyses of T3 and T4, N0, N1, and M0 patients showed that overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival, and progression-free interval (PFI) were worse in those with high ZFP1 expression. ZFP1 expression in GC was moderately to strongly positively correlated with the infiltration levels of effector central memory T cells and T helper cells and negatively correlated with Th17 cells and NK CD56bright cells. The lncRNA-miRNA-ZFP1 axis was predicted using a public database. CCK8, colony formation, and wound healing assays were conducted to investigate whether ZFP1 promoted the proliferation and migration of GC cells. Our study suggests that ZFP1 plays a key role in the prognosis, immune response, and progression of GC and is a significant factor in the diagnosis and treatment of this disease.