A Potential Prognostic Biomarker for Glioma: Aldo-Keto Reductase Family 1 Member B1

Aldo-keto reductase family 1 member B1 (AKR1B1) plays a vital role in tumor development and is involved in the tumor immune process. However, its role in glioma cell is poorly studied. This study’s aim was to assess the role of AKR1B1 in glioma through bioinformatics analysis. The AKR1B1 expression data and corresponding clinical data of glioma were collected from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The R packages were used for data integration, extraction, analysis, and visualization. According to the median value of the risk score, all patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups to draw the Kaplan–Meier (KM) survival curves and to explore the level of immune infiltration. The expression of AKR1B1 was significantly elevated in glioma tissues compared to normal tissues ( P  < 0.001). The high expression of AKR1B1 was significantly associated with WHO grade ( P  < 0.001), IDH status ( P  < 0.001), 1p/19q codeletion ( P  < 0.001), primary therapy outcome ( P  = 0.004), and age ( P  < 0.05). Kaplan–Meier survival analysis found that OS (HR = 3.75, P  < 0.001), DSS (HR = 3.85, P  < 0.001), and PFI (HR = 2.76, P  < 0.001) were lower in patients with glioma with high AKR1B1 expression than in the group with low AKR1B1 expression. Based on GESA, six pathways (including interferon gamma signaling, signaling by interleukins, cell cycle checkpoints, cytokine receptor interaction, cell adhesion molecules (CAMs), and cell surface interactions) at the vascular wall were identified as significantly different between the two groups. Moreover, highly expressed AKR1B1 was associated with immune cell infiltration. AKR1B1 plays a key role in glioma progression and prognosis and, therefore, serves as a potential biomarker for prediction of patients’ survival.