The Role of HMGB in Immune Response and Its Relation to Inflammatory and Cancerous Diseases
1
Lecturer, Al-Nasiriyah Technical Institute, Southern Technical University, Basra, Iraq
2
Lecturer, Al-Nasiriyah Technical Institute, Southern Technical University, Basra, Iraq.
Received: 2025-08-04
Revised: 2025-08-19
Accepted: 2025-09-09
Published: 2025-09-26
High-mobility group box (HMGB) proteins, and HMGB1 especially, have become more than multifaceted immunomodulators and inflammatory messengers, operating as nuclear housekeeping components and extracellular alarms. This study involved the analysis of HMGB1 immunological and pathological roles by addressing their expression patterns, immune correlations, and prognostic value in cancer and inflammatory diseases using integrated transcriptomic and clinical data of large sample sizes (n = 7,720). The CIBERSORTx and TIMER2.0 were utilized to examine the expression of HMGB1 and infiltration distribution of immune cells. It was found that HMGB1 was significantly increased in 75 percent of the cancers evaluated and more than 80 percent of the samples with inflammatory diseases. HMGB1 was significanly upregulated in 75 percent of the examined cancers and more than 80 percent of the samples which had inflammatory illnesses. The positive correlations were observed of high HMGB1 expression with IL-6 (r = 0.62, p < 0.0001) and TNF-alpha (r = 0.57, p < 0.0001) and of negative correlations of high HMGB1 with CD8+ T cell infiltration (r = 19.3%). The same activation of NF-kappa B, Toll-like receptor as well as apoptosis signaling was identified in HMGB1-high groups through pathway enrichment. A survival analysis showed that the overall survival was decreased by 43.6 percent where HMGB1 levels were at hepatocellular carcinoma patients (p = 0.003). HMGB1 is a hub mediator of inflammation and immune regulation in cancerous as well as inflammatory disease. Its close linkage with immune-dysregulation and associated poor prognosis potential makes it an important biomarker therapeutic hit. This paper offers a framework that can help see how the multifaceted activities of HMGB1 can take place at the systems level in regard to immunopathology, precision oncology.
HMGB1, inflammation, immune response, cancer, biomarkers, cytokines, transcriptomics, immune infiltration.