High Expression of MORC2 is Associated with Poor Clinical Outcomes and Immune Infiltrates in Colon Adenocarcinoma

Purpose: Microrchidia 2 (MORC2) is a universally expressed molecule that has recently been identified as a chromatin modulator and elevated in many malignancies. However, its prognostic value and immunological role of MORC2 in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) have never been illustrated. Methods: The clinical parameters and MORC2 expression datasets of COAD patients were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Cancer and adjacent tissue specimens from surgically resected COAD patients were collected, and quantitative real-time PCR was used to detect MORC2 expression. Differentially expressed genes related to MORC2 were discovered and used for functional enrichment analysis. The diagnostic and prognostic values of MORC2 in COAD were conducted using receiver operating characteristics (ROC), Kaplan–Meier survival curve analysis, PrognoScan, Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) public databases and nomograms. Eventually, the association of MORC2 with tumor microenvironment was analyzed by using TIMER and GSVA package of R (v3.6.3). Results: MORC2 expression was upregulated in COAD tissues, and the RT-qPCR results further verified the reliability of our differential analysis at the transcriptional level. Additionally, higher expression of MORC2 was correlated to a poor prognosis for COAD patients. MORC2 was an independent prognostic factor for COAD and could be a diagnostic factor for early COAD. Furthermore, MORC2 expression was positively correlated with immune cells such as NK cells, TFH cells and so on. Conclusion: The findings demonstrated that overexpression of MORC2 was correlated with worse prognosis and immune infiltrates of COAD. MORC2 can serve as a reliable diagnostic and prognostic biomarker and a target of immunotherapy for COAD patients. Keywords: MORC2, colon adenocarcinoma, diagnosis, prognosis, immune cell infiltration, biomarker