Gene expression analysis of SOCS, STAT and PIAS genes in lung cancer patients

Baicalin reduces inflammation to inhibit lung cancer via targeting SOCS1/NF-κB/STAT3 axis

Inflammation affects several aspects of lung cancer progression including cell proliferation, metastasis, apoptosis, angiogenesis, and drug resistance. Baicalin, an active component of Scutellaria baicalensis Georgi, exhibits anticancer activity in various cancers. However, the effects of baicalin on lung cancer and the underlying molecular mechanisms remain largely unknown. This study is to explore the effect and mechanism of baicalin on lung cancer cell A549 and urethane-induced mouse lung cancer. A cell viability assay, colony formation assay, wound healing assay, acridine orange/ethidium bromide (AO/EB) staining assay, Western blot assay, urethane-induced mouse lung cancer model, hematoxylin and eosin (HE) staining, immunohistochemistry (IHC), and ELISA assay were performed to investigate the effects of baicalin on lung cancer in vitro and in vivo. Network pharmacology analysis, molecular docking, gene silencing assays, and LPS-induced inflammation model were utilized to explore the molecular mechanisms underlying the effect of baicalin on lung cancer. Baicalin showed significant anti-proliferative, anti-migratory, anti-inflammatory and pro-apoptotic effects in vitro; it also inhibited the progression of urethane-induced mouse lung cancer in vivo. Mechanistically, suppressor of cytokine signaling 1 (SOCS1) was the key determinant for baicalin-induced inhibition of lung cancer. Baicalin increased SOCS1 expression to inactivate the NF-κB/STAT3 pathway to inhibit lung cancer in vitro and in vivo. Taken together, baicalin reduces inflammation to inhibit lung cancer via targeting SOCS1/NF-κB/STAT3 axis, providing a prospective compound and novel target for lung cancer treatment.

Integrative analysis revealed a correlation of PIAS family genes expression with prognosis, immunomodulation and chemotherapy

BACKGROUND

Protein inhibitor of activated STATs (PIAS) has pleiotropic biological effects, such as protein post-translational modification, transcriptional coregulation and gene editing. It is reported that PIAS family genes are also correlated with immune cells infiltration in cancers that highlights their unnoticed biological role in tumor progression. However, the relationship of their expression with prognosis, immune cell infiltration, tumor microenvironment, and immunotherapy in pan-cancer has been rarely reported.

METHODS

The multi-omics data were used to investigate the expression level of PIAS family members in pan-cancer, and the prognostic value of their expression in different tumors was analyzed by univariate Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship of PIAS gene expression with tumor microenvironment, immune infiltrating subtypes, stemness score and drug sensitivity. In addition, we also used wound healing and transwell assays to verify the biological effects of PIAS family gene expression on invasion and metastasis of HCC cells.

RESULTS

We found that PIAS family genes expression is significantly heterogeneous in tumors by multi-genomic analysis, and associated with poor prognosis in patients with multiple types of cancer. Furthermore, we also found that genetic alterations of PIAS family genes were not only common in different types of human tumors, but were also significantly associated with disease-free survival (DFS) across pan-cancer. Single-cell analysis revealed that PIAS family genes were mainly distributed in monocytes/macrophages. Additionally, we also found that their expression was associated with tumor microenvironment (including stromal cells and immune cells) and stemness score (DNAss and RNAss). Drug sensitivity analysis showed that PIAS family genes were able to predict the response to chemotherapy and immunotherapy. PIAS family genes expression is closely related to tumor metastasis, especially PIAS3. High PIAS3 expression significantly promotes the migration and invasion of liver cancer cell lines (HCC-LM3 and MHCC97-H).

CONCLUSIONS

Taking together, these findings contribute to determine whether the PIAS family genes are a potential oncogenic target gene, which have important contribution for the development of cancer immunotherapy.