GALNT2/14 overexpression correlate with prognosis and methylation:a potential therapeutic target for lung adenocarcinoma.

Abstract

OBJECTIVE\nGALNT2/14 are members of the glycosyltransferase protein family, which initiate mucin-type O-glycosylation of peptides in the Golgi apparatus. However, the correlation between GALNT2/14 and disease prognosis and methylation in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) remains unclear. Thus, we sought to identify its potential value in LUAD.\n\n\nMETHODS\nGALNT2/14 expression was analyzed using publicly-available datasets. The association between GALNT2/14 and disease prognosis was evaluated. In addition, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and single sample GSEA (ssGSEA) were used to explore the potential biological functions of GALNT2/14. The correlation between the copy number variations and methylation level of GALNT2/14 and its mRNA expression was analyzed via cBioPortal. Finally, we explored the prognostic value of the GALNT2/14 methylation levels by MethSurv in LUAD.\n\n\nRESULTS\nGALNT2/14 were highly expressed in LUAD tumor tissue than normal tissue (p < 0.001). Multivariate analysis showed that high GALNT2/14 expression were both an independent prognostic factor. GSEA found that GALNT2/14 expression was associated with the methylation, gene silencing and cell division, whereas immune analysis showed that GALNT2/14 expression positively correlated with the expression level of PD-L1. Finally, the methylation level of GALNT2/14 negatively correlated with the GALNT2/14 expression (R= -0.26 and -0.36, P<0.001, respectively), and patients with GALNT2/14 hypomethylation had worse overall survival than patients with high methylation (p <0.05).\n\n\nCONCLUSIONS\nThis study demonstrated that the overexpression of GALNT2/14 in LUAD is a biomarker for poor prognosis. The biological functions of GALNT2/14 are potentially related to methylation, gene silencing, tumorigenesis and cell division. These findings help to elucidate the role of GALNT2/14 in tumorigenesis and provides additional insight for therapy and prognosis of LUAD.