FURIN Correlated with Immune Infiltration Serves as a Potential Biomarker in SARS-CoV-2 Infection-Related Lung Adenocarcinoma
Abstract Background: FURIN, as a proprotein invertase, has been found to be expressed in a variety of cancers and plays an important role in cancer. In addition, SARS-CoV-2 requires FURIN to enter human cell. However, the role of FURIN in lung adenocarcinoma remains unclear. And the expression of SARS-CoV-2 related gene in lung adenocarcinoma have not been clarify. Methods: In this study, we obtained the expression data of Oncomine, TIMER, GEPIA, HPA. Then we used UALCAN database to analyze the expression of FURIN in different clinical feature subgroups. In PrognoScan and Kaplan-Meier plotter databases, we found a certain association between FURIN and poor OS outcomes in LUAD patients. Then we used the cBioPortal database to determine the type and frequency of FURIN changes in LUAD patients. Studies based on the TIMER database show a strong correlation between FURIN expression and various immune cell infiltrates and markers. Analysis in UALCAN database showed that the decreased promoter methylation level of FURIN in LUAD may lead to the high expression of FURIN. Furthermore, we used the LinkedOmics database to evaluate gene co-expression of FURIN in LUAD and to investigate their role in tumor immunity. Finally, we evaluated the expression of FURIN in LUAD patients who infected with SARS-CoV.Results: FURIN was highly expressed in lung adenocarcinoma. And FURIN expression was significantly associated with poor overall survival. FURIN expression was found to be correlated with six major permeable immune cells and with macrophage immune marker in LUAD patients. In addition, SARS-CoV-2 infection might affect the expression of FURIN. Conclusions: FURIN, as SARS-CoV-2 related gene, was highly expressed in LUAD. Furthermore, FURIN can be used as a promising biomarker for determining prognosis and immune infiltration in LUAD patients.