Pan-cancer landscape of ITGAV and its potential role in gastric cancer.

Integrin subunit alpha V (ITGAV), a subunit of the integrin receptor, is involved in many types of cancers. In order to explore the potential mechanisms of ITGAV in cancers, we carried out a comprehensive pan-cancer analysis using public database. In this study, ITGAV expression in different cancers and the relationship between ITGAV and clinic-pathological features, prognosis, genetic alteration, epigenetic modification, and tumor immune microenvironment were systemically analyzed. Gene enrichment analysis was performed to explore potential functions of ITGAV in gastric cancer (GC). GC tissue microarrays and in vitro cell experiments were used to verify the prediction results in GC. The results revealed that ITGAV was variably expression in different cancers, and ITGAV had a certain prognostic and diagnostic value in most cancers, including GC. ITGAV expression was found to be related to genetic alteration, DNA methylation, immune checkpoint gene, and immune cell infiltration in multiple cancers. Functional analyses revealed that ITGAV was involved in the regulation of EMC remodeling, ferroptosis, and cuproptosis in GC. In vitro experiments verified that ITGAV was correlated with GC cell proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion. Our study demonstrated that ITGAV can be used as an effective prognostic and immunological biomarker for multiple cancers. ITGAV can promote GC malignant progression and could serve as a potential therapeutic target for GC treatment.