BACH1 promotes lung adenocarcinoma cell metastasis through transcriptional activation of ITGA2

BACH1 plays an important role in promoting cancer. This study aims to further verify the relationship between the expression level of BACH1 in lung adenocarcinoma prognosis, as well as the influence of BACH1 expression on lung adenocarcinoma and the potential mechanism. The expression level of BACH1 in lung adenocarcinoma and its relationship with prognosis was evaluated by lung adenocarcinoma tissue microarray analysis combined with bioinformatics approaches. Gene knockdown and overexpression were used to investigate the functions and molecular mechanisms of BACH1 in lung adenocarcinoma cells. The regulatory downstream pathways and target genes of BACH1 in lung adenocarcinoma cells were explored by bioinformatics and RNA sequencing data analysis, real-time PCR, western blot analysis, and cell immunofluorescence and cell adhesion assays. Chromatin immunoprecipitation and dual-luciferase reporter assays were carried out to verify the target gene binding site. In the present study, BACH1 is abnormally highly expressed in lung adenocarcinoma tissues, and high BACH1 expression is negatively correlated with patient prognosis. BACH1 promotes the migration and invasion of lung adenocarcinoma cells. Mechanistically, BACH1 directly binds to the upstream sequence of the ITGA2 promoter to promote ITGA2 expression, and the BACH1-ITGA2 axis is involved in cytoskeletal regulation in lung adenocarcinoma cells by activating the FAK-RAC1-PAK signaling pathway. Our results indicated that BACH1 positively regulates the expression of ITGA2 through a transcriptional mechanism, thereby activating the FAK-RAC1-PAK signaling pathway to participate in the formation of the cytoskeleton in tumor cells and then promoting the migration and invasion of tumor cells.