Overexpressed BSG related to the progression of lung adenocarcinoma with high-throughput data-mining, immunohistochemistry, in vitro validation and in silico investigation.

PURPOSE: Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is a highly prevalent cancer with high mortality. The gene basigin (BSG) is strongly expressed in certain tumors. This study investigated the expression level of BSG in LUAD and its role in the poor prognosis of LUAD.
METHODS: The mRNA expression of BSG in LUAD was from GEO, Oncomine and TCGA database. Prognostic data were provided by SurvExpress. The expression of BSG protein was detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC). Cell function experiments of viability, proliferation and apoptosis assays were performed in A549. Clustering analysis of BSG co-expressed genes was generated by Gene Ontology (GO) Enrichment, KEGG pathway and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network.
RESULTS: BSG mRNA level was significantly over-expressed in LUAD (pooled SMD = 0.564, 0.448-0.681, P<0.001). The analysis in SurvExpress revealed that high expression of BSG indicated significantly poor prognosis (pooled HR = 1.20, 1.10-1.30, P<0.0001). IHC assay also showed that BSG protein expression was significantly up-regulated in LUAD (P<0.001), and positive BSG expression was notably associated with higher pathology grade (P = 0.041) and lymphatic metastasis (P = 0.014). Moreover, BSG can enhance the viability and proliferation ability (both P<0.001) and weaken cell apoptosis (P<0.001) in A549. The most enriched GO terms in the co-expressed genes of BSG were translation related enrichment. The KEGG pathway showed that these genes were markedly involved in Ribosome pathways.
CONCLUSION: Up-regulated BSG in LUAD is related to advanced progression and poor prognosis by influencing cell viability, proliferation and apoptosis. BSG could be a potential biomarker for the targeted therapy of LUAD.