Deciphering the role of CHST14 in gastric cancer through <i>in silico</i> analysis

Background: Gastric cancer’s heterogeneous nature and subtle symptoms necessitate the identification of reliable diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers. Methods: CHST14 expression in gastric cancer was analyzed using TCGA and GTEx data. Differentially expressed genes were identified and visualized through ROC, survival, volcano plots, and nomograms. Functional analyses included GO and KEGG enrichment, drug sensitivity predictions from the GDSC database, and immune cell infiltration estimation using TIMER algorithms. Results: CHST14 was overexpressed in gastric cancer tissues and correlated with poor overall survival and disease-specific survival, but showed no correlation with progression-free survival. Drug sensitivity analysis revealed CHST14’s positive association with chemotherapeutic agents such as SN-38, paclitaxel, and 5-fluorouracil, and negative correlation with others including BEZ235 and doxorubicin. Immune analysis showed CHST14 expression positively associated with infiltration of B cells, CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells, macrophages, neutrophils, and dendritic cells. Single-cell RNA sequencing data highlighted CHST14's role in cell-cell interactions, particularly between malignant cells and fibroblasts, and its involvement in tumor-stroma crosstalk. Enrichment analyses linked CHST14 to oncogenic pathways such as epithelial-mesenchymal transition, TNF-α signaling, and MAPK regulation. Conclusion: CHST14 is a potential diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for gastric cancer, influencing drug metabolism and immune microenvironment interactions. These findings provide insights into CHST14’s mechanistic role in tumor progression and its potential as a therapeutic target. Further studies are required for clinical validation and mechanistic exploration.