Research Paper Volume 13, Issue 3 pp 3742—3762

Key microRNAs and hub genes associated with poor prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma

Guan-Chao Ye1, *, , Ya-Fei Liu1, *, , Lan Huang2, , Chun-Yang Zhang1, , Yin-Liang Sheng1, , Bin Wu1, , Lu Han1, , Chun-Li Wu1, , Bo Dong1, , Yu Qi1, ,

  • 1 Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, China
  • 2 Biotherapy Center, The First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450052, China
* Equal contribution

Received: April 25, 2020       Accepted: October 8, 2020       Published: January 10, 2021      

https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202337
How to Cite

Copyright: © 2021 Ye et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

In the study, we obtained 36 pairs of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) tissues and adjacent non-tumorous tissues. Then, we chose a specific hub-target gene of miRNA and used qRT-PCR to evaluate the expression of PECAM1. We found that the expression level of PECAM1 mRNA in LUAD was significantly lower than that in adjacent nontumor tissues (P<0.0001). Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted on 481 LUAD patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) according to the Cox proportional hazard regression model to evaluate the impact of PECAM1 expression and other clinicopathological factors on survival. The results showed that the low expression of PECAM1 was an important independent predictor of poor overall survival (HR, 0.704; 95% CI, 0.518-0.957; P = 0.025). Based on the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) database, the relationship between PECAM1 expression and B cell, CD8+ T cell, CD4+ T cell, macrophage, neutrophil, and dendritic cell infiltration was weak in LUAD (P<0.01). In particular, a more significant positive correlation between PECAM1 expression and HLA-complex members, CD1C, NRP1, and ITGAX expression in dendritic cell was detected in LUAD. The mechanism which PECAM1 involved in the development of LUAD may be closely related to changes in the immune microenvironment.

Abbreviations

LUAD: lung adenocarcinoma; miRNA: microRNA; GEO: Gene Expression Omnibus; DEGs: differentially expressed genes; DEMs: differentially expressed miRNAs; DAVID: Database for Annotation, Visualization, and Integrated Discovery; PPI: protein-protein interaction; OS: overall survival; NSCLCs: non–small-cell lung cancers; mRNA: messenger RNA; TCGA: The Cancer Genome Atlas; DCs: dendritic cells; logFC: log fold change; BP: biological processes; MF: molecular function; ECM: extracellular matrix; CCs: cellular components; KEGG: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes; GO: Gene Ontology; MCODE: Molecular Complex Detection; KM: Kaplan-Meier; GEPIA: Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis; HPA: Human Protein Atlas; ROC: receiver operating characteristic; AUC: area under curve; HR: hazard ratio; TIMER: Tumor Immune Estimation Resource; qRT-PCR: quantitative reverse transcription PCR.