Shiyu Zhang, Fanting Kong, Lei Zheng, Xiaowei Li, Lining Jia, Lixian Yang

Department of Breast Surgery, Xingtai People’s Hospital, Xingtai, Hebei, 054000, People’s Republic of China

Correspondence: Lixian Yang, Department of Breast Surgery, Xingtai People’s Hospital, No. 818 Xiangdu District, Xingtai, Hebei, 054000, People’s Republic of China, Email yanglixian@hebmu.edu.cn

Background: The role of Semaphorin 7a (SEMA7A) in the initiation and progression of different types of cancerous lesions has been extensively studied. However, the prognostic significance of SEMA7A, specifically in breast cancer (BC), lacks clarity.
Methods: We conducted an evaluation on the relationship between SEMA7A and the prognosis, immune invasion and tumor mutation burden in different types of cancer by analyzing data from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. The present study focused on investigating the expression level, mutation, immune correlation and coexpression of SEMA7A in BC, utilizing various databases such as the University of Alabama at Birmingham Cancer data analysis portal, cBioPortal and tumor immune estimation resource. Survival analysis was carried out using the Kaplan-Meier Plotter. Furthermore, we employed the R software package to generate receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and nomograms. Notably, P< 0.05 was considered to indicate statistical significance.
Results: Using pancancer analysis, it has been observed that the expression of SEMA7A is elevated in various types of cancer and is strongly correlated with the prognosis of different cancer types. SEMA7A also exhibits a significant association with the tumor mutation burden of diverse types of cancer. Moreover, SEMA7A displays a notable increase in BC cases, and was indicated to have a substantial association with the abundance of immune infiltration. In-depth survival analysis demonstrated that elevated levels of SEMA7A expression are notably linked to shorter overall survival and distant metastasis-free survival among patients with BC. The efficiency of SEMA7A as a reliable prognostic biomarker for BC has been substantiated by the validation of ROC curves and nomograms.
Conclusion: SEMA7A has the potential to function as a prognostic indicator for BC, and its correlation with immune infiltration in BC is significant.

Keywords: SEMA7A, breast cancer, biomarker, prognosis, methylation, immune infiltration, nomogram, bioinformatics