Integrative pan-cancer analysis of transferrin reveals context-dependent prognostic associations and links to immune and metabolic disease-related programs
Weiyi Kong, Ranran Zhang, Zhenyang Fu, Sicheng Chen, Yining Dai, Haomin Xie, Zongrong Lin, Hongcheng Chen, He Li, Yu Chen · 2026
Read Integrative pan-cancer analysis of transferrin reveals context-dependent prognostic associations and links to immune and metabolic disease-related programs by Weiyi Kong, Ranran Zhang, Zhenyang Fu, Sicheng Chen, Yining Dai, Haomin Xie, Zongrong Lin, Hongcheng Chen, He Li, Yu Chen (2026) in the Tower of Babel, a free online library of public-domain works preserved in clean, searchable text. No sign-up. The full text is served as a plain-text file at a predictable URL, where text is present: https://antarctic-labs.com/tower-of-babel/pmc-13530081.txt.
Description
Weiyi Kong and colleagues mapped transferrin (TF), the blood's main iron carrier, across cancers and related diseases. Published in 2026, the pan-cancer study joined gene, protein, and clinical data from major public databases across 33 tumor types, plus selected noncancer conditions. Iron handling shapes tumor growth, yet TF's prognostic meaning varied by cancer type and was poorly charted.
TF differed sharply by tissue and by cancer type. The steadiest poor-survival links appeared in kidney clear cell cancer and stomach cancer, holding up after adjustment for other factors. TF levels also tracked immune cell patterns and drug-response profiles, while separate sets for fatty liver disease, heart failure, and liver scarring showed high TF with partly shared pathways. Lab work tied TF shifts to growth and stress traits. Readers get a marker whose meaning shifts by setting, not a universal one.
Catalog record
| CREATOR | Weiyi Kong, Ranran Zhang, Zhenyang Fu, Sicheng Chen, Yining Dai, Haomin Xie, Zongrong Lin, Hongcheng Chen, He Li, Yu Chen |
|---|---|
| YEAR | 2026 |
| COLLECTION | PAPERS |
| FORMAT | TXT |
| FILE SIZE | 48 KB |
| VERSION | 1.0 |
| LICENSE | CC BY 4.0 |
| RIGHTS | CC BY |
| SOURCE | Europe PMC |