Forkhead box 1 expression is upregulatedin non-small cell lung cancer and correlateswith pathological parameters

Abstract

Objectives: As the member of the Fox family of transcription factors, Forkhead box M1 (FoxM1) is known to be critical in pathogenesis and development of many solid tumors. However, the clinical value and expression pattern in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is still poorly understood. Methods: In this study, real-time PCR was mainly applied to examine the gene expression levels of FoxM1 in 120 pairs of clinical NSCLC tissues, which were classified into different groups according to smoking status, lymph node metastasis, and tumor grade. By utilizing the online Kaplan-Meier plotter, overall survival analysis was performed to study the correlation between FoxM1 expression and prognosis of lung cancer (LC) patients. Afterwards, the correlation of FoxM1 gene expression and the clinical pathological parameters was examined by κ2 test in these 120 NSCLC patients. Results: FoxM1 was found to be aberrantly upregulated in NSCLC patients, and its overexpression was correlated to groups designated as smokers, cases of positive lymph node metastasis and cases of advanced tumor grades. Online survival analysis showed that high expression of FoxM1 predicted shorter overall survival of NSCLC patients. Additionally, FoxM1 upregulation was statistically correlated with positive smoking history, lymph node metastasis and higher tumor grades. Conclusion: FoxM1 is overexpressed in cancerous tissues and is associated with the poor prognosis of NSCLC patients. Our results provide insights into the utility of FoxM1 as an important biomarker and prognostic factor for NSCLC.

Keywords

• foxm1
• upregulation
• nsclc
• prognosis