ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Genet.
Sec. Cancer Genetics and Oncogenomics
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fgene.2025.1588583
A comprehensive analysis identifies and validates NPC1 as a potential biomarker for prognosis in HCC
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hunan University of Medicine, Huaihua, Hunan Province, China
- 2Second Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, Changsha, Hunan Province, China
- 3Xinjiang Medical University, Ürümqi, Xinjiang Uyghur Region, China
- 4The First Affiliated Hospital of Hunan University of Medicine, Huaihua, China
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Niemann-Pick type C1 protein (NPC1), a key regulator of intracellular cholesterol transport and a transmembrane protein, has been implicated in carcinogenesis, particularly in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Despite the noted association, the specific role of NPC1 in HCC remains underexplored. In this study, we conducted a comprehensive analysis of NPC1 expression across diverse gene expression databases to elucidate its prognostic significance and functional interactions.Utilizing LinkedOmics for co-expression network analysis and KEGG for functional enrichment, we identified a set of genes co-expressed with NPC1 and its associated biological pathways. Our findings demonstrate that NPC1 is frequently upregulated and amplified in HCC tumor tissues, with higher expression levels significantly associated with reduced overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (RFS), and disease-free survival (DFS). Functional enrichment analysis of the top 50 positively correlated genes with NPC1 highlighted significant enrichment in pathways related to organelle fission, nuclear division, chromosomal region spindle formation, and centrosome function, suggesting a role for NPC1 in DNA replication processes. These findings establish a correlation between NPC1 expression and HCC prognosis, laying the groundwork for future studies to explore the therapeutic potential of NPC1 inhibition in HCC.
Keywords: NPC1, prognosis, biomarker, HCC, Therapeutic target
Received: 06 Mar 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Peng, Lu, Gou, He, Chen and Yang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaozhen Peng, Hunan University of Medicine, Huaihua, 418000, Hunan Province, China
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