ABSTRACT
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was declared a serious global public health emergency. Hospitalization and mortality rates of lung cancer patients diagnosed with COVID-19 are higher than those of patients presenting with other cancers. However, the reasons for the outcomes being disproportionately severe in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) patients with COVID-19 remain elusive. The present study aimed to identify the possible causes for disproportionately severe COVID-19 outcomes in LUAD patients and determine a therapeutic target for COVID-19 patients with LUAD. We used publicly available data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases and various bioinformatics tools to identify and analyze the genes implicated in SARS-CoV-2 infection in LUAD patients. Upregulation of the SARS-CoV-2 infection-related molecules dipeptidyl peptidase 4, basigin, cathepsin B (CTSB), methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase, and peptidylprolyl isomerase B rather than angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 may explain the relatively high susceptibility of LUAD patients to SARS-CoV-2 infection. CTSB was highly expressed in the LUAD tissues after SARS-CoV-2 infection, and its expression was positively correlated with immune cell infiltration and proinflammatory cytokine expression. These findings suggest that CTSB plays a vital role in the hyperinflammatory response in COVID-19 patients with LUAD and is a promising target for the development of a novel drug therapy for COVID-19 patients.
Subject(s)
Adenocarcinoma of Lung/virology , COVID-19/genetics , Cathepsin B/genetics , Lung Neoplasms/virology , Adenocarcinoma of Lung/genetics , Adenocarcinoma of Lung/immunology , Adenocarcinoma of Lung/mortality , Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2/genetics , Animals , Basigin/genetics , CD8-Positive T-Lymphocytes/virology , COVID-19/immunology , COVID-19/mortality , Cricetinae , Cyclophilins/genetics , Cytokines/blood , Dipeptidyl Peptidase 4/genetics , Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic , Humans , Lung Neoplasms/genetics , Lung Neoplasms/immunology , Lung Neoplasms/mortality , Methylenetetrahydrofolate Dehydrogenase (NADP)/genetics , Minor Histocompatibility Antigens/genetics , Molecular Targeted Therapy , Prognosis , Protein Interaction Maps/genetics , Up-RegulationABSTRACT
Objective: To assess the risk of public health emergencies, both the indigenous ones and the imported ones, which might occur in the mainland of China in August 2021.
ABSTRACT
At the request of the corresponding author, Dr. Wenyu Lu, of the published article entitled "A Study of Potential SARS-CoV-2 Antiviral Drugs and Preliminary Research of Their Molecular Mechanism, Based on Anti-SARS-CoV Drug Screening and Molecular Dynamics Simulation" by Xiaomeng Zhao, Ruixia Liu, Zhi Miao, Nan Ye, and Wenyu Lu (J Comput Biol; epub 1 Dec 2020; https://doi.org/10.1089/cmb.2020.0112), Journal of Computational Biology officially retracts the paper. Dr. Lu stated in his communication to the Editor that, "due to personal reasons, our data is not perfect enough. I want to modify and add some content; I want to withdraw the manuscript." Though Dr. Lu did not provide details of the specific problems with the data, the Editor and Publisher agreed to the request to retract the paper.