Abstract
The involvement of alarmin high-mobility group nucleosome-binding protein 1 (HMGN1) in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is unknown. To address the presence of HMGN1 in the serum of different stages of NSCLC patients and healthy controls, we enrolled a consecutive sample of adult serum at diagnosis and correlated it with clinicopathologic outcomes. A total of 100 NSCLC patients and 23 healthy volunteers were enrolled from January 2012 through December 2013. Serum HMGN1 levels were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Additionally, HMGN1 levels in 50 NSCLC patients with early-stage disease who received curative pneumonectomy were correlated with survivals. Kaplan-Meier plots were used to analyze the data. The patients with NSCLC were characterized by significantly higher serum levels of HMGN1 (0.4585 ± 0.0640 ng/ml) compared to those in healthy controls (0.3578 ± 0.0304 ng/ml). The serum HMGN1 levels were 0.4027 ± 0.0271 ng/ml, 0.4604 ± 0.0328 ng/ml, 0.5408 ± 0.0459 ng/ml, and 0.4213 ± 0.0341 ng/ml in patients with TNM stages I, II, IV, and IV, respectively (p < 0.001). There were significant differences among four groups (p < 0.001). Additionally, a positive correlation between serum HMGN1 and tumor stage was found in local disease, while serum HMGN1 level in metastatic NSCLC patients was significantly decreased. The Kaplan-Meier plots showed that patients with high serum HMGN1 had a poorer overall survival (OS) after curative pneumonectomy than those with low serum HMGN1 (p = 0.019). Inflammation triggered by alarmins plays a role in NSCLC pathogenesis. HMGN1 can serve as a useful clinical parameter for evaluating disease progression and predicting the outcomes for early-stage patients with NSCLC undergoing pneumonectomy.
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Acknowledgments
This work has been funded, in part, by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30901376) and Tianjin Application Foundation and Advanced Technology Research Program (No. 13JCYBJC41400, No. 14JCTPJC00476).
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki Declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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Feng Wei and Fan Yang contribute equally as first authors.
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Wei, F., Yang, F., Jiang, X. et al. High-mobility group nucleosome-binding protein 1 is a novel clinical biomarker in non-small cell lung cancer. Tumor Biol. 36, 9405–9410 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-3693-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13277-015-3693-7