ArticleFrontiers in molecular biosciences2020
Systematic Analysis of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Receptor ACE2 in Malignant Tumors: Pan-Cancer Analysis.
Article in Frontiers in molecular biosciences, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers.
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12 citing papers in PubMed, 15 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Angiotensin‑converting enzyme 2 expression in human tumors: Implications for prognosis and therapy (Review).Oncology reports · 2025Review
- [American journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging · 2024Article
- Pan-Cancer Analysis of the COVID-19 Causal GeneACS omega · 2023Article
- Impacts of COVID-19 in Breast Cancer: From Molecular Mechanism to the Treatment Approach.Current pharmaceutical biotechnology · 2023Review
- A Pan-Cancer Analysis on the Systematic Correlation of MutS Homolog 2 (MSH2) to a Malignant Tumor.Journal of oncology · 2022Article
- System Analysis of Adaptor-Related Protein Complex 1 Subunit Mu 2 (AP1M2) on Malignant Tumors: A Pan-Cancer Analysis.Journal of oncology · 2022Article
- Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 Protein Is Overexpressed in a Wide Range of Human Tumour Types: A Systematic Tissue Microarray Study on >15,000 Tumours.Biomedicines · 2021Article
- Potential Molecular Mechanisms of Rare Anti-Tumor Immune Response by SARS-CoV-2 in Isolated Cases of Lymphomas.Viruses · 2021Article
- ACE2 correlates with immune infiltrates in colon adenocarcinoma: Implication for COVID-19.International immunopharmacology · 2021Article
- Research advances in the targeted therapy and immunotherapy of Wilms tumor: a narrative review.Translational cancer research · 2021Review
- Pan-Cancer Analysis of Genomic and Prognostic Characteristics Associated With Coronavirus Disease 2019 Regulators.Frontiers in medicine · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was first detected in patients with pneumonia in December 2019 in China and it spread rapidly to the rest of the world becoming a global pandemic. Several observational studies have reported that cancer is a risk factor for COVID-19. On the other hand, ACE2, a receptor for the SARS-CoV-2 virus, was found to be aberrantly expressed in many tumors. However, the characterization of aberrant ACE2 expression in malignant tumors has not been elucidated. Here, we conducted a systematic analysis of the ACE2 expression profile across 31 types of tumors.
methodsDistribution of ACE2 expression was analyzed using the GTEx, CCLE, TCGA pan-cancer databases. We evaluated the effect of ACE2 on clinical prognosis using the Kaplan-Meier survival plot and COX regression analysis. Correlation between ACE2 and immune infiltration levels was investigated in various cancer types. Additionally, the correlation between ACE2 and immune neoantigen, TMB, microsatellite instability, Mismatch Repair Genes (MMRs), HLA gene members, and DNA Methyltransferase (DNMT) was investigated. The frequency of ACE2 gene mutation in various tumors was analyzed. Functional enrichment analysis was conducted in various cancer types using the GSEA method.
resultsIn normal tissues, ACE2 was highly expressed in almost all 31 organs tested. In cancer cell lines, the expression level of ACE2 was low to medium. Although aberrant expression was observed in most cancer types, high expression of ACE2 was not linked to OS, DFS, RFS, and DFI in most tumors in TCGA pan-cancer data. We found that ACE2 expression was significantly correlated with the infiltrating levels of macrophages and dendritic cells, CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, and B cells in multiple tumors. A positive correlation between ACE2 expression and immune neoantigen, TMB, and microsatellite instability was found in multiple cancers. GSEA analysis which was carried out to determine the effect of ACE2 on tumors indicated that several cancer-associated pathways and immune-related pathways were hyperactivated in the high ACE2 expression group of most tumors.
conclusionThese findings suggest that ACE2 is not correlated with prognosis in most cancer types. However, elevated ACE2 is significantly correlated with immune infiltrating levels, including those of CD8+ T cells, CD4+ T cells, macrophages, neutrophils, and DCs in multiple cancers, especially in lung and breast cancer patients. These findings suggest that ACE2 may affect the tumor environment in cancer patients with COVID-19.
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