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Integrated multi-omics analysis reveals comprehensive metabolism-driven tumor heterogeneity and immune microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinomas
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  • Published: 04 March 2026

Integrated multi-omics analysis reveals comprehensive metabolism-driven tumor heterogeneity and immune microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinomas

  • Yu Li1 na1,
  • Zihan Luo1 na1,
  • Bingyu Zhang2 na1,
  • Wenyao Zhu3,
  • Jinlian Zhang4,
  • Zizhao Li5 &
  • …
  • Lingyu Zhang1 

Scientific Reports , Article number:  (2026) Cite this article

  • 850 Accesses

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We are providing an unedited version of this manuscript to give early access to its findings. Before final publication, the manuscript will undergo further editing. Please note there may be errors present which affect the content, and all legal disclaimers apply.

Subjects

  • Biomarkers
  • Cancer
  • Computational biology and bioinformatics
  • Oncology

Abstract

Metabolic reprogramming is a well-recognized hallmark of cancer, characterized by its remarkable flexibility in activating alternative pathways in the absence of specific regulators or substrates. Non-negative Matrix Factorization (NMF) was employed to identify tumor heterogeneity at the terms of metabolism, progression-related pathways and molecular subtypes of HCC based on gene set variation analysis (GSVA) and stratified survival analysis. The inherent heterogeneities of metabolism landscape which includes genomes, methelomic and transcriptomic data, proteomes, phosphoproteomes, mutational and immune microenvironment landscape between metabolic subtypes were performed based on multi-omics analyses. NMF has led three distinct survival-associated subtypes (NMF cluster 1, iHCC1; NMF cluster 2, iHCC2; NMF cluster 3, iHCC3) based on metabolic gene expression, and GSVA revealed remakeable metabolic differences. Additionally, multi-omics analysis further revealed the unique landscape of different metabolic subtypes, encompassing transcriptome, epigenetic and post-transcriptional modifications (PTMs) at both bulk and single cell seq-RNA level. Furthermore, 39 subtype-specific variables for identifying metabolic subtypes were screened using four feature selection algorithms and preliminarily validated on 8 machine learning models. We then built and verified a nomogram to guide the individualized strategy for HCC patients, utilizing a combination of metabolic signatures and clinical characteristics. Finally, we preliminarily identified the potential contribution of Aldolase B (ALDOB) in metabolic reprogramming triggered by epigenetic and PTMs. Overall, the research defined robust subtypes and further revealed potential targets linking metabolism with immune microenvironment and non-mutational epigenetic modifications, thereby advancing our understanding of metabolic heterogeneity for application in HCC diagnosis and clinical risk stratification.

Data availability

The data sets (TCGA, GEO, and ICGC) generated and/or analyzed during the current study period can be found in the MATERIALS AND METHODS section of the original manuscript file. The microarray data of GSE14520 were downloaded from the GEO database. Proteome and phosphoproteome data of 159 HCC patients were approved and provided by the researchers in supplementary data. The DNA methylation expression profile was derived from TCGA-LIHC. We have described in detail the processes including data set selection, filtering and/or standardization in materials and methods. Any further data or information are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Abbreviations

HCC:

Hepatocellular carcinoma

NMF:

Non-negative matrix factorization

GSVA:

Gene set variation analysis

NAFLD:

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease

T2DM:

Type 2 diabetes mellitus

MsigDB:

Molecular signatures database

TCGA:

The cancer genome atlas

ICGC:

The international cancer genome consortium

TPM:

Transcripts per kilobase million

FDR:

False discovery rate

UMAP:

Uniform manifold approximation and projection

PCA:

Principal component analysis

ML:

Machine learning

DT:

Decision tree

RF:

Random Forest

SVM:

Support vector machine

KNN:

k-nearest neighbor

LDA:

Linear discriminant analysis

AdaBoost:

Adaptive boosting

XgBoost:

Extreme gradient boosting

AFP:

Alpha-fetoprotein

GGT:

γ-Glutamyl transferase

FCM:

Fuzzy C-means clustering

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all participants for their understanding and support of our research.

Funding

This work has been supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82303218), the Natural Science Foundation of Anhui Province (No.2308085QH285), the Key Program of Anhui Provincial Department of Education (No.2022AH051438) and the Natural Science Key Project of Bengbu Medical College (No.2021BYZD238).

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Author notes
  1. Yu Li, Zihan Luo and Bingyu Zhang contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Laboratory Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical University, Bengbu, Anhui Province, 233004, People’s Republic of China

    Yu Li, Zihan Luo & Lingyu Zhang

  2. School of Public Health, China Medical University, Shenyang, Liaoning Province, 110112, People’s Republic of China

    Bingyu Zhang

  3. Department of urology, the Central Hospital of Bengbu, Bengbu, Anhui Province, 233004, People’s Republic of China

    Wenyao Zhu

  4. Department of pathology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical University, Bengbu, Anhui Province, 233004, People’s Republic of China

    Jinlian Zhang

  5. Zongshan School of Medicine, Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen, 518107, People’s Republic of China

    Zizhao Li

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Contributions

All authors read and approved the final version of the manuscript. L.Y.Z. and Y.L. conceived and designed the study. Y.L., B.Y.Z., and J.L.Z. developed and implemented ML pipeline under the supervision of L.Y.Z. and J.L.Z. L.Y.Z., J.L.Z., and W.X.Z. developed the methodology for multi-omics data generation and phenotypic data. L.Y.Z. and Y.L. performed formal analysis and investigation on omics data. L.Y.Z., Y.L., B.Y.Z., W.Y.Z. and Z.Z.L, were under the responsibility of the production of Figures and Tables, and manuscript writing. Z.H.L performed additional dataset retrieval and analysis in the revised manuscript. Z.H.L performed additional dataset retrieval and analysis in the revised manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Lingyu Zhang.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics

Ethics approval for the study was granted by the clinical trial ethics committee (No. 2023023) at the First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical University, and all patients provided written informed consent. Ethic approval was exempted for public resource by the First Affiliated Hospital of Bengbu Medical University according to the description of national legislation guidelines, such as item 1 and 2 of Article 32 of the Measures for Ethical Review of Life Science and Medical Research Involving Human Subjects dated February 18, 2023, China, because the patients involved in the database have obtained ethical approval.

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Li, Y., Luo, Z., Zhang, B. et al. Integrated multi-omics analysis reveals comprehensive metabolism-driven tumor heterogeneity and immune microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinomas. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-42856-7

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  • Received: 28 August 2025

  • Accepted: 27 February 2026

  • Published: 04 March 2026

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-42856-7

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Keywords

  • Hepatocellular carcinoma
  • Metabolic reprogramming
  • Epigenetic reprogramming
  • Post-translational modification
  • Multi-Omics integration
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