Correlation of Cofilin-1 and Twist-1 Protein Expression in Human Lung Cancer

Abstract

Metastasis is the leading cause of death in non-small cell lung cancer patients (NSCLC). Actin cytoskeletal rearrangement is frequently accompanied by cancer cell invasion and metastasis induced by the epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT). The expression levels of the actin-associated protein cofilin-1 and the crucial EMT molecule Twist-1 in NSCLC tissues were investigated in this work. Immunohistochemical (IHC) staining was used to identify 67.4% of tissue locations that had reciprocal amounts of cofilin-1 and Twist-1 using lung cancer tissue arrays. This reciprocal expression pattern was also found in 10 out of 15 NSCLC cell lines and 21 out of 25 clinicopathological NSCLC tissue sections. Furthermore, in tissue arrays and clinicopathological tissue samples, high levels of cofilin-1 and low levels of Twist-1 accounted for 80% and 71.5% of the reciprocal expression pattern, respectively. This pattern was also found in normal lung tissues, lung cancer tissues in stages I and II, and NSCLC tissues with adenocarcinoma subtypes. Despite the fact that cofilin-1 and Twist-1 were expressed in opposite directions, there was a positive association between the two proteins in normal lung tissues and lung tumor tissues. In addition, induced expression of cofilin-1 in H1299 NSCLC cells may suppress Twist-1 expression. A public microarray dataset with a maximum of 1,926 NSCLC samples were made accessible through an online Kaplan-Meier survival analytic tool. The investigators discovered that high levels of expression of both the cofilin-1 and Twist-1 genes were linked to lower NSCLC patient survival, particularly in the adenocarcinoma subtype. The multivariate Cox regression model was used in the analysis. Even though more data is required to confirm the reciprocal relationship between cofilin-1 and Twist-1 expression levels and NSCLC survival rates, it could be a useful indication of NSCLC progression.