Identification of ASF1B as a prognostic marker for liver cancer by meta-analysis and its immune value revealed by a comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of 33 human cancers

Introduction
As one of the most common malignant tumours, liver cancer is difficult to detect in the early stage, with strong metastasis and poor prognosis. Anti-silencing function protein 1 was originally discovered in yeast as a histone H3-H4 chaperone, and studies have shown that ASF1B may be a target for inhibiting the growth of hepatocellular carcinoma cells.

Aim
To evaluate the diagnostic and prognostic significance of ASF1B expression in human LIHC on the basis of TCGA data.

Material and methods
A meta-analysis revealed that high ASF1B expression was strongly associated with better overall survival. A comprehensive pan-cancer analysis of 33 human cancers revealed the immunotherapeutic value of ASF1B.

Results
In this study, we observed a significant upregulation of ASF1B expression in LIHC samples compared to non-cancer samples. Clinical analysis showed that high expression of ASF1B was associated with age, tumour status, and clinical stage. Survival analysis showed that patients with high ASF1B expression had worse overall survival and progression-free survival than patients with low ASF1B expression. The AUCs of the 1-year, 3-year, and 5-year survival-related ROC curves were 0.672, 0.590, and 0.591, respectively.

Conclusions
Our study shows that ASF1B may provide new ideas for the diagnosis and prognosis of liver cancer patients, as well as providing a new direction for the application of ASF1B in tumour immunotherapy.