Correlation Between TYMS and Thyroid Cancer and Its Potential Mechanism

Liu Keyi; Liang Guangpeng; Meng Ran; Song Bing; Chai Fang

Abstract：Objective To study the correlation between thymidine synthase(TYMS)and thyroid papillary carcinoma(PTC),and to explore the related mechanism.Methods The expression of TYMS in cancer was analyzed by TIMER 2.0 database.The ex-pression of TYMS in thyroid cancer was analyzed in TCGA and other databases.TYMS protein expression in PTC tissues and corre-sponding paracancer tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry.Kaplan-Meier plotter and ROC curve were used to evaluate the re-lationship between TYMS and prognosis.Gene Ontology GO Functional Annotation,Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes(KEGG)pathway analysis and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis(GSEA)were used to predict the biological role of TYMS.The poten-tial effect of TYMS on tumor infiltrating immune cells(TIICs)was investigated using TIMER and other tools.Results TYMS was highly expressed in 18 cancers(P<0.05).The expression of TYMS in thyroid cancer tissues was up-regulated(P<0.05),and high expression of TYMS was associated with poor prognosis in thyroid cancer patients(P<0.05).In immunohistochemistry,TYMS were highly expressed in PTC.Target gene GO and KEGG analysis were mainly related to the interaction between cytokines and receptors,while GSEA analysis was mainly related to neutrophil degranulation,extracellular matrix regulation and chemokine signaling pathway.TYMS expression could affect the infiltration level of multiple immune cells in thyroid carcinoma(P<0.05).Conclusion TYMS showed high expression in PTC tissues,and was associated with poor prognosis and immune infiltration.TYMS is expected to become a new target for PTC diagnosis and immunotherapy.