A Pan-Cancer Analysis of the Oncogenic Role of Twinfilin Actin Binding Protein 1 in Human Tumors

Understanding common and unique mechanisms driving oncogenic processes in human tumors is indispensable to develop efficient therapies. Recent studies have proposed Twinfilin Actin Binding Protein 1 (TWF1) as a putative driver gene in lung cancer, pancreatic cancer and breast cancer, however a systematic pan-cancer analysis has not been carried out. Here, we set out to explore the role of TWF1 in 33 tumor types using TCGA (The Cancer Genome Atlas), GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) dataset, Human Protein Atlas (HPA), and several bioinformatic tools. As part of our analysis, we have assessed expression across tumors. We found that over-expression of generally predicted poor OS for patients with tumors with high expression, such as mesothelioma, lung adenocarcinoma, cervical cancer and pancreatic adenocarcinoma. We also assessed the mutation burden of in cancer and the -associated survival of cancer patients, compared the phosphorylation of TWF1 between normal and primary tumor tissues and explored putative functional mechanisms in TWF1-mediated oncogenesis. Our pan-cancer analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the oncogenic roles of TWF1 in multiple human cancers.