Journal article
Genome-wide screening and validation of exosome-derived TLN1 as a regulator of epithelial–mesenchymal transition in lung cancer
Scientific Reports, Vol.15, pp.1-16
2025
PMCID: PMC11968874
PMID: 40181045
Appears in Cancer Research Cluster Research Collection
Abstract
In addition to embryonic development, wound healing, and tissue fibrosis, epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is another process that enhances tumor invasiveness and metastatic activity. Exosomes transport a variety of bioactive components between cells and are crucial for cell‒cell communication in multiple complex biological processes, including cancer. Although a few studies have shown that exosomes encapsulate microRNAs that induce a pro-EMT tumor microenvironment, a systematic survey of potential EMT-related regulators in lung cancer exosomes is still lacking. To identify exosome-related EMT signals that could be employed for precise cancer diagnosis, we used a computational approach to generate a list of candidates EMT regulators and performed experimental validation in lung cancer cell lines. Particularly, we focused on exosome-derived differentially expressed genes that were not previously reported to be associated with lung cancer. We identified 25 exosome-derived protein coding regulators associated with EMT with aberrant transcript expression in both lung squamous cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma. By focusing on clinical features such as survival time, smoking status, tumor purity, and primary tumor subtypes, we found that these 25 genes are important for lung cancer development based on a combined cohort of 9781 lung cancer samples from 24 independent genomics studies. By validating two examples of upregulated and downregulated exosome-derived regulators, we confirmed that TLN1 is a potential oncogene in lung cancer progression, which suggests that it may serve as a diagnostic marker. In summary, our results provide a potential exosome-based biomarker for cancer diagnosis that could be used as a therapeutic tool to control the occurrence of EMT and affect cancer progression.
Details
- Title
- Genome-wide screening and validation of exosome-derived TLN1 as a regulator of epithelial–mesenchymal transition in lung cancer
- Authors
- Xianhui Ruan - Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and HospitalXing Wan - Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and HospitalWeike Ma - Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and HospitalJianli Liu - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringTongfei Tian - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringJiaojiao Zhang - Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and HospitalJingtai Zhi - Tianjin Medical University Cancer Institute and HospitalMinghan Qiu - Tianjin HospitalMin Zhao - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and EngineeringQi Wang (Corresponding Author) - Tianjin Nankai HospitalPeng Li (Corresponding Author) - Nankai University
- Publication details
- Scientific Reports, Vol.15, pp.1-16
- Publisher
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date published
- 2025
- DOI
- 10.1038/s41598-025-96210-4
- ISSN
- 2045-2322
- PMID
- 40181045; PMC11968874
- Copyright note
- This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/.
- Data Availability
- The datasets used and analysed during the current study available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.
- Grant note
- This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 82103386, No. 32200588); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, Nankai University (Grant No. 63231123); Tianjin Science and Technology Plan Project (No. 21JCQNJC00530) and Tianjin Health Technology Project (No. TJWJ2021QN059). Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Project (21JCYBJC01570, from Tianjin Municipal Science and Technology Committee).
- Organisation Unit
- Cancer Research Cluster; School of Science, Technology and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Record Identifier
- 991127099702621
- Output Type
- Journal article
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