Analysis reveals lower STK11 expression in cervical cancer, correlating with immune cell infiltration and disease recurrence.
Objective: This study explores STK11 expression and mechanism in cervical cancer tissue. Methods: STK11 expression in cervical cancer was retrieved from Xiantao Academic Database and The Human Protein Atlas. UALCAN was used to analyze its correlation with patients' pathological characteristics. KM Plotter provided gene expression data and survival statistics for cervical cancer, which underwent COX regression to determine STK11 expression's relationship with overall survival and calculate patients' risk ratio. TIMER was used to investigate associations between STK11 expression and immune cell infiltration in cervical cancer. STRING constructed the STK11-related protein-protein interaction network. Finally, immunohistochemistry verified STK11 protein expression in 90 cervical cancer tissues and 26 adjacent tissues, analyzing correlations with prognosis and clinical characteristics. Results: STK11 protein expression was significantly lower in cervical cancer tissue than normal cervical tissue, correlating with recurrence (P < 0.05) but not with overall survival, age, cancer type, clinical stage, pathological grade, or lymphatic metastasis (P > 0.05). Additionally, STK11 expression in cervical cancer positively correlated with B cell and CD4+ T cell infiltration (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Low STK11 protein expression in cervical cancer associates with disease occurrence and development, potentially serving as an early diagnostic indicator and novel therapeutic target for cervical cancer.
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Ling et al. (2025) studied this question.
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