Expression of Specificity protein 1 in tumor tissues and its impact on the prognosis of cancer patients with an emphasis on race/ethnicity

Title: Expression of Specificity protein 1 in tumor tissues and its impact on the prognosis of cancer patients with an emphasis on race/ethnicity

Background: Specificity protein (Sp) transcription factors (eg., Sp1, Sp3 and Sp4) play a vital role in growth and development. Sp1 is known to regulate genes that are critical for angiogenesis, tumor growth and metastasis. The overexpression of Sp1 is associated with poor prognosis in some cancers for all populations, however, it may vary depending on the demographic background.

Objective: The objective of this project is to analyze the expression of Sp1 in various tumor tissues and evaluate the association with the prognosis of cancer patients using the publicly available online data sets. The other goal is to understand the impact on prognosis with race/ethnicity.

Methods: Data was obtained from the publicly available resources, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (a landmark cancer genomics program developed by the National Cancer Institute and the National Human Genome Research Institute). Information was collected for 34 cancers and screened for the expression status (upregulated or downregulated), significance and relevance to prognosis of all patients and in relation to race/ethnicity.

Results: The information on the level of Sp1 expression was not available for 11 of the cancers in the database. The results are presented for the cancers that TCGA provided Sp1 expression information for. In 60% of the 23 cancers screened, Sp1 expression significantly impacted patient survival resulting in a poorer prognosis. The significance range was between 1.2E-02 to 4.43E-10. In a third of cancers evaluated, Sp1 expression affected the prognosis of patients depending on race/ethnicity. Interestingly, the association of Sp1 with poorer prognosis was found in certain racial/ethnic patients, despite there being no significant effect on the prognosis when combining the data for all patients. Glioblastoma, lung squamous cell carcinoma and prostate cancer are among the cancers that showed relevance to prognosis based on race/ethnicity even though there was no response on the overall survival of all patients combined.

Conclusion: These preliminary observations suggest an association between Sp1 expression in tumor tissues with the prognosis of some cancers. The results also suggest that Sp1 can differentially affect the population and may contribute to a poorer prognosis for patients belonging to a certain race/ethnicity in some cancers.