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Pan-cancer analysis of TRPV2 identifies its potential role as a prognostic and immunologic biomarker in oesophageal cancer

British Journal of Cancer volume 129, pages 567–569 (2023)Cite this article

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Hot beverage drinking has long been confirmed as one of the most notable risk factors for oesophageal cancer [1, 2]. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear. We read with great interest the publication by Huang et al. [3], which found that transient receptor potential vanilloid receptor 2 (TRPV2), one of the thermally sensitive TRP family members, played an important role in oesophageal cancer tumorigenesis under thermal stress and gave us a molecule-based clue to unravel the association between hot-drinking and oesophageal cancer. Inspired by their work, we conducted a pan-cancer analysis to explore the role of TRPV2 in pan-cancers based on the TCGA database and paid special attention to oesophageal cancer (ESCA).

TRPV2 is a calcium-permeable cation channel from the TRPV channel family identified by Caterina et al. in 1999, which can be activated by heat stimuli (>52 °C) [5]. Its expression is high in multiple systems, especially abundant in the brain regions regulating osmoregulation and autonomic regulation, including appetite and circulation systems [5]. TRPV2 acts an important role in signalling pathways mediating cellular processes and exhibits oncogenicity in cancers [6]. Nevertheless, the specific molecular mechanism of TRPV2 in the tumorigenesis of ESCA was not investigated until the work of Huang et al. They discovered that TRPV2 expression was upregulated in cancer cells compared with non-tumour oesophageal squamous cells, and tumour cell proliferation, migration, and tumour-related angiogenesis were promoted when adding 54 °C stimuli or TRPV2 agonist [3]. Their study also indicated the correlation between the high expression level of TRPV2 and poor survival by conducting a Kaplan–Meier analysis. Consistent with their study, our analysis demonstrated that expression of TRPV2 was higher in ESCA tumour tissues compared with normal tissues, and TRPV2 expression was significantly associated with tumour grades. Meanwhile, TRPV2 expression showed a correlation with worse survival status in DSS and DFS for ESCA, which was in accordance with the results of Huang et al. In addition, our study found a relationship between the expression of TRPV2 and tumour immunity, including immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoints. Previous studies have found the specific expression of TRPV2 in multiple immune cells, where it acted as a specialised calcium channel to participate in cell cycle progression, growth, and differentiation in immune-related diseases, including tumours [7]. Moreover, Link et al. discovered the crucial role of TRPV2 in the early process of phagocytosis of macrophages by using TRPV2 knockout mice [8]. TRPV2 was also found to play a crucial role in T lymphocyte connection with antigen-presenting cells as a calcium ion channel, where it forms a cluster at the immunological synapse to trigger T-cell functions [5, 9]. Although the specific mechanisms of how TRPV2 influences tumour immunity are still to be discovered, our results demonstrated the importance of TRPV2 in immune infiltration and should be regarded as a potential biomarker in immunotherapy.

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Fig. 1: The role of TRPV2 in pan-cancer analysis.

Data availability

Data used in this study are publicly available from the TCGA database (https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/).

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Sangerbox (http://vip.sangerbox.com/) for the support of data visualisation.

Funding

This work was supported by CAMS Innovation Fund for Medical Sciences (CIFMS) (No. 2021-I2M-C&T-B-018).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Thoracic Surgery, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, 100021, Beijing, China

    Hang Yi & Yousheng Mao

  2. Department of Medical Oncology, National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, 100021, Beijing, China

    Yiwen Lin

  3. Department of Breast Surgery, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, 100730, Beijing, China

    Xuefei Wang

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HY and YL were involved in conceptualising, literature review and drafting the letter, and YM revised the letter for final submission. All authors approved the final version for submission and publication of the content.

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Correspondence to Yousheng Mao.

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Yi, H., Lin, Y., Wang, X. et al. Pan-cancer analysis of TRPV2 identifies its potential role as a prognostic and immunologic biomarker in oesophageal cancer. Br J Cancer 129, 567–569 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41416-023-02302-1

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