HMGA1 is a Prognostic Biomarker and Correlated with Glycolysis in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Purpose: Lung cancer is one of the leading causes with high morbidity and mortality. High mobility group A1 (HMGA1) protein participates in the process of tumorigenesis. This study seeks to explore the specific role of HMGA1 in prognostic value based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database of Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and glycolysis progression in LUAD cells. Patients and Methods: In this research, we compared HMGA1 mRNA expression between tumor tissues and normal samples and evaluated the correlations with clinical characteristics in LUAD patients based on the data of TCGA database. The survival outcome with overall survival (OS), disease-specific survival (DSS) and clinicopathologic characteristics associated were performed using the Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression. In addition, gene-set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was carried out to explore the biological pathways that related to HMGA1. Cell experiments including cell proliferation assay and glycolysis proteins were performed with A549 and H1299 cells. Results: Our results revealed that HMGA1 mRNA expression was higher in LUAD tissues than in normal tissues. Increased HMGA1 expression in LUAD was associated with Gender (p<0.01), Pathologic stage I&II vs stage III&IV (p<0.001), T1&T2 vs T3&T4 stage (p<0.05), N0 vs N2 stage (p<0.01). Furthermore, multivariate analysis revealed that HMGA1 was an independent risk factor of OS and DSS for LUAD patients (p<0.05). HMGA1 were positively correlated with glycolysis gluconeogenesis pathway and glycolysis markers (HK2, GLUT1, PKM2, LDHA) based on GSEA and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) database. At the cellular level, the results of qRT-PCR and western blot assays showed that si-HMGA1 markedly decreased the expression of glycolysis markers. HMGA1 promoted cell glycolysis progression via PI3K/AKT pathway transfected with HMGA1-plasmid and the treatment with 20 μM LY294002. Relevant animal experiments were also synchronously validated and si-HMGA1 groups down-regulated xenograft growth including the weights and size in tumor xenografts. Conclusions: In conclusion, our results suggested that HMGA1 was significantly correlated with poor survival for LUAD tissues and involved in the process of glycolysis in LUAD cells.