Clinical Significance and Potential Signal Pathway of Upregulated Pituitary Tumor-Transforming Gene 1 in Metastatic Prostate Cancer Based on Bioinformatic Methods

Abstract

This study examined the expression and clinical significance of pituitary tumortransforming gene 1 (PTTG1) in prostate cancer (PCa) and metastatic prostate cancer (MPCa). Analysis of 19 PCa and 10 MPCa public datasets showed that PTTG1 expression was significantly upregulated in PCa (SMD=0.55, 95% CI: 0.29, 0.83) and MPCa (SMD=2.28, 95% CI: 1.38, 3.19). PTTG1 also demonstrated moderate discriminatory ability for PCa (AUC=0.75, 95% CI: 0.71, 0.79) and high discriminatory potential for MPCa from localized PCa (AUC=0.97, 95% CI: 0.95, 0.98). Differential co-ex-pressed gene (DCEG) analysis identified 314 PTTG1-related genes, with CCNA2, CCNB1, and CDK1 emerging as key hub genes positively correlated with PTTG1. While most clinical parameters showed no correlation with PTTG1 expression, data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) revealed an association between PTTG1 and both M-stage and recurrence. Enrich-ment analyses indicated that PTTG1 DCEGs were involved in cell division, nucleoplasm, protein binding, and the cell cycle pathway. These findings suggest that PTTG1 may serve as a marker for distinguishing MPCa from localized PCa and provide insights into its potential role in prostate cancer progression.