Objective To investigate the role and mechanism of minichromosome maintenance 10 (MCM10) in tumor microenvironment, disease stage, prognosis and response to tumor therapy.

Methods The role of MCM10 in tumor immune invasion, immune escape, tumor progression, treatment response and prognosis of different types of cancer cohorts were analyzed using the Timer, UALCAN, GEPIA, GPS-Prot, GSCALite, TIDE algorithm, Protein Data Bank and STRING databases.

Results MCM10 was abnormally expressed in almost all TCGA tumor types and subtypes, and associated with tumor stage, metastasis, and poor prognosis. MCM10 was involved in tumor immune escape through different mechanisms in different cancer types, and renal clear renal cell carcinoma, colon cancer, and hepatocellular carcinoma through T cell rejection and tumor immune cell infiltration. The genetic alterations and oncogenic churacteristics of MCM10 were correlated with BEND7, SEPHS1, OPTN, UCMA, PHYH, CANK1D, CCDC3, PRPF18, SEC81A2, FAM107B, NUDT5, PROSER2, ECHDC3, CELF2 and CDC123 genes, which were involved in cell cycle regulation and DNA replication. The expression of MCM10 was closely related to immunotherapy of various cancers. It was also found that the high expression level of MCM10 was associated with the decreasing sensitivity of cancer cells to mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors. In addition, the MCM10 responses to immune checkpoint blocking subcohorts and overall survival showed greater predictive power than tumor mutation load, T cell clonality, and B cell clonality.

Conclusions MCM10 is an immunooncogenic molecule that can serve as a biomarker for cancer detection, prognosis, treatment design and follow-up.