Research Paper Volume 14, Issue 19 pp 7986—8000
High FHL2 mRNA expression and its prognostic value in lung cancer
- 1 Department of Thoracic Surgery, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
- 2 Department of Hepatobiliary and Pancreatic Surgery, General Surgery Center, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
- 3 The Key Laboratory of Pathobiology, Ministry of Education, College of Basic Medical Sciences, Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
- 4 Department of Neurosurgery, The First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun 130021, China
Received: July 19, 2022 Accepted: September 23, 2022 Published: October 10, 2022
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.204328How to Cite
Copyright: © 2022 Jiao 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
Background: Lung cancer is the most frequent cancer globally with a high number of cancer-related deaths. The 4-and-a-half LIM domain protein 2 (FHL2) is an oncogenic gene, which promotes the proliferation, invasion, and metastasis of cancer cells. In this study, we aimed to demonstrate that lung cancer patients with high FHL2 expression have worse overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS).
Methods: TCGA was used to study FHL2 mRNA expression. Nomograms were used to predict the relationship between FHL2 expression levels and survival. The qRT-PCR was used to detect the FHL2 expression in lung cancer cells. In vitro experiments including CCK-8 assay, wound healing, and Transwell assay were performed.
Results: This study comprised RNA-Seq gene expression data and clinical features for 1018 lung cancer patients. FHL2 was found to be overexpressed in lung cancer tissues. FHL2 demonstrated moderate diagnostic ability for lung cancer (AUC = 0.857). Kaplan–Meier curves and Cox regression analysis revealed the higher FHL2 expression with the poorer OS and RFS (P < 0.001). The nomogram results indicated that FHL2 could be used to predict the survival of lung cancer patients. GSEA analysis results show that high expression of FHL2 is related to glycolysis and unfolded protein reflection. FHL2 was highly expressed in lung cancer cells and related to their proliferation, migration, and invasion ability.
Conclusions: The high expression level of FHL2 in lung cancer can be used as an independent predictor of prognosis in clinical practice.