1. Academic Validation
  2. Identification of HMGB2 associated with proliferation, invasion and prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma via weighted gene co-expression network analysis

Identification of HMGB2 associated with proliferation, invasion and prognosis in lung adenocarcinoma via weighted gene co-expression network analysis

  • BMC Pulm Med. 2022 Aug 12;22(1):310. doi: 10.1186/s12890-022-02110-y.
Xie Qiu  # 1 Wei Liu  # 2 Yifan Zheng  # 3 Kai Zeng 4 Hao Wang 5 Haijun Sun 6 Jianhua Dai 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The First People's Hospital of Lianyungang, Lianyungang, People's Republic of China.
  • 2 Department of Thoracic Surgery, Haian People's Hospital Affiliated to Nantong University, Haian, People's Republic of China.
  • 3 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Nantong University, Nantong, People's Republic of China.
  • 4 Department of Thyroid Surgery, The Eighth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-Sen University, Shenzhen, 518000, China.
  • 5 Yancheng TCM Hospital, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Yancheng, 224002, China.
  • 6 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The First People's Hospital of Lianyungang, Lianyungang, People's Republic of China. [email protected].
  • 7 Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, The First People's Hospital of Lianyungang, Lianyungang, People's Republic of China. [email protected].
  • # Contributed equally.
Abstract

Background: High mobility group protein B2 (HMGB2) is a multifunctional protein that plays various roles in different cellular compartments. Moreover, HMGB2 serves as a potential prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD).

Methods: In this study, the expression pattern, prognostic implication, and potential role of HMGB2 in LUAD were evaluated using the integrated bioinformatics analyses based on public available mRNA expression profiles from The Cancer Genome Atlas and Gene Expression Omnibus databases, both at the single-cell level and the tissue level. Further study in the patient-derived samples was conducted to explore the correlation between HMGB2 protein expression levels with tissue specificity, (tumor size-lymph node-metastasis) TNM stage, pathological grade, Ki-67 status, and overall survival. In vitro experiments, such as CCK-8, colony-formation and Transwell assay, were performed with human LUAD cell line A549 to investigate the role of HMGB2 in LUAD progression. Furthermore, xenograft tumor model was generated with A549 in nude mice.

Results: The results showed that the HMGB2 expression was higher in the LUAD samples than in the adjacent normal tissues and was correlated with high degree of malignancy in different public data in this study. Besides, over-expression of HMGB2 promoted A549 cells proliferation and migration while knocking down of HMGB2 suppressed the tumor promoting effect.

Conclusions: Our study indicated that HMGB2 was remarkably highly expressed in LUAD tissues, suggesting that it is a promising diagnostic and therapeutic marker for LUAD in the future.

Keywords

Bioinformatics; Biomarker; HMGB2; LUAD; WG.

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