IGF2BP3 is associated with HPV status and tight junction in HPV-related cervical cancer

Abstract Background Although m6A modification was known to have broad effects on malignant tumors by participating in tumor proliferation, differentiation, tumorigenesis, invasion and metastasis, as oncogenes or anti-oncogenes, their effects of microbes in cancers have been rarely disputed. To investigate the function of IGF2BP3, one of the indispensable regulators of m6A, in HPV virus invading and transmitting, integrative analyses was performed in this study and identified that it was highly expressed in tumors and was related to the poor prognosis in CESC. Methods We investigate the expresseion level of IGF2BP3 and its prognostic value in CESC via multiple datasets including TCGA, GTEx datasets and TIMER. Gene ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analyses of differentially expressed genes were performed using GOplot, org.Hs.eg.db and clusterProfiler packages and visualized using the ggplot2 package Results In HPV-positive tumors, IGF2BP3 was positively associated with tumor HPV status. Further analysis demonstrated that IGF2BP3 high status was correlated with signaling pathways related to cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions, including receptor ligand activity, neuroactive ligand receptor interaction and chemical carcinogenesis receptor activation. Moreover, correlation analysis showed that IGF2BP3 would impair the formation of cell polarity and cell-cell contacts by dysregulating the expression of tight junction molecules. Conclusions Our results identified that IGF2BP3 high status, is associated with poor prognosis and HPV status, and IGF2BP3 serves as a mediator of the tight junction formation in HPV-associated cancer, which provides a promising therapeutic target for anti-cancer schedule.