Abstract
Background: dedicator of cytokinesis 2 is an atypical guanine exchange factor, which is particularly expressed in hematopoietic cells and modulates the activation along with the migration of immune cells by activating Ras--related C3 botulinum toxin substrate (Rac). Nevertheless, the role of DOCK2 in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) remains unclear.Methods: Herein, we performed bioinformatics analysis of lung adenocarcinoma data abstracted from TCGA (The Cancer Genome Altas) and GEO (Gene Expression Omnibus) data resources, and combined with web tools consisting of LinkedOmics, TIMER, and TISIDB. Finally, combined with clinical lung adenocarcinoma samples, we verified the expression of DOCK2 in tissue and its effect on the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma.Results: In the TCGA lung adenocarcinoma data set, the expression of DOCK2 was down-regulated in tumor tissues and verified in multiple independent cohorts. In addition, the low expression of DOCK2 indicates a poor overall survival(OS) in both TCGA and other GEO data sets and in our clinical samples. COX regression data illustrated that the low expression of DOCK2 was an independent predictor for OS. Functional network analysis shows that DOCK2 participates in immune response through interleukin production, neuroinflammatory response, acquired immune response, leukocyte migration and activation of lymph node cells, and is related to multiple immune-related pathways. Besides, the expression of DOCK2 was remarkably related with many kinds of tumor infiltrating immune cells.Conclusion: combined with bioinformatics analysis and clinical sample verification, our study shows that DOCK2 can independently estimate the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma and is related to immune infiltration. As a promising prognostic indicator and potential target of immunotherapy, the potential effect of DOCK2 on lung adenocarcinoma and its molecular mechanism are worthy of further discussion.
Low expression of NLRP1 is associated with a poor prognosis and immune infiltration in lung adenocarcinoma patients