Prospective role and immunotherapeutic targets of sideroflexin protein family in lung adenocarcinoma: evidence from bioinformatics validation

• Published in: Functional & integrative genomics Vol. 22; no. 5; pp. 1057 - 1072
• Main Authors: Dang, Huy Hoang, Ta, Hoang Dang Khoa, Nguyen, Truc T. T., Anuraga, Gangga, Wang, Chih-Yang, Lee, Kuen-Haur, Le, Nguyen Quoc Khanh
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.10.2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Adenocarcinoma; Animal Genetics and Genomics; Biochemistry; Bioinformatics; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Cancer; Cell Biology; Cell proliferation; Immunotherapy; Iron; Life Sciences; Lung cancer; Medical prognosis; Metastases; Microbial Genetics and Genomics; Mitochondria; Original Article; Plant Genetics and Genomics; Regulatory proteins; Survival analysis; Tumors; Bioinformatics analysis; Immune therapeutics; Lung adenocarcinoma; Sideroflexin; SLC56A; SFXN
• ISSN: 1438-793X; 1438-7948
• DOI: 10.1007/s10142-022-00883-3

As lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer deaths globally, characterizing the tumor molecular profiles is crucial to tailoring treatments for individuals at advanced stages. Cancer cells exhibit strong dependence on iron for their proliferation, and several iron-regulatory proteins have been proposed as either oncogenes or tumor suppressive genes. This study aims to evaluate the prospective therapeutic and prognostic values of the sideroflexin (SFXN) gene family, whose functions involve mitochondrial iron metabolism, in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). Differential expression analysis using TIMER and UALCAN tools was first employed to compare SFXNs expression levels between normal and LUAD tissues. Next, SFXNs’ prognostic values, biological significance, and potential as immunotherapy candidates were examined from GEPIA, cBioPortal, MetaCore, Cytoscape, and TIMER databases. It was found that all members of SFXN family, except SFXN3, were differentially expressed in LUAD compared to normal samples and within different stages of LUAD. Survival analysis then revealed SFXN1 to be related to worse overall survival outcome in patients with LUAD. Furthermore, several correlations between expression of SFXN1 and immune infiltration cells were discovered. To conclude, our study provides evidence of SFXN family gene’s relevance to the prognosis and immunotherapeutic targets of LUAD.