Progesterone Receptor Membrane Component 1 (PGRMC1/Sigma-2 receptor) is located on chromosome Xq21 and encodes a
haem-containing
protein that interacts with
epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) and
cytochromes P450, with function in
tumor proliferation and chemoresistance. Although the over-expression of PGRMC1 reported in many different types of human
cancers, systematic analysis of its oncogenic role of PGRMC1 has not been performed for any
cancer. In this work, we analyzed the transcriptomics, genomics, and clinical data of 498 head-neck
squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC) samples from the public-accessible database, The
Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The Cox regression was performed to calculate the hazard ratio (HR) of PGRMC1 expression as a prognosis feature for overall survival (OS). Our results demonstrated that PGRMC1 expression served as a predictor for worse OS (HR = 1.95, P = 0.0005) in head-neck
squamous cell carcinoma. And the over-expression of PGRMC1 was strongly correlated with various metabolic process activity as well as
cancer metastasis and cell proliferation features in human head-neck
squamous cell carcinoma patient's cohort. Besides, the over-expression and unfavorable prognosis value of PGRMC1 were also observed in many other
cancer types. This study provides insights into the potential oncogenic functional significance of PGRMC1 in
cancer research.