The diagnostic value of LGALS1 in esophageal cancer and its potential molecular pathways via bioinformatic analysis

Abstract Background: Esophageal cancer (ESCA) was one of the most common malignant tumors. The purpose of this study was to reveal the role and potential regulatory mechanism of LGALS1 in the progression of ESCA.Methods: Oncomine, Timer and TCGA databases were used to analyze the expression level of LGALS1 and its value in the diagnosis of ESCA. The correlation between LGALS1 expression and the clinicopathological characteristics in ESCA patients was analyzed through the Ualcan database. In the TCGA database, we performed Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) to elucidate the potential mechanism underlying the role of LGALS1 in ESAC pregression. Besides, LGALS1 co-expressed genes were imported into the STRING database to build a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network. Hub genes were screened by the CytoHubba plug-in in Cytoscape and was verified in Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) and TCGA databases.Results: LGALS1 was highly expressed in ESCA tissues. Increased LGALS1 expression was related to age, ethnicity, clinical stage, tumor grade, and histological subtype of ESCA patients, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis showed that the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.8511 (P < 0.001). GO and KEGG showed that LGALS1 co-expressed genes, in which 482 genes were included, were mainly involved in endothelial cell differentiation, transforming growth factor receptor signaling pathway, epithelial cell proliferation, ECM receptor interactions, leukocyte migration, transcriptional disorders during cancer, PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and so on. Moreover, GSEA showed that elevated expression of LGALS1 was mainly enriched in ECM receptor interaction, cancer pathway, and TGF beta signaling pathway. The hub genes (COL1A1, FN1, COL1A2, COL3A1, COL5A1, COL5A2, COL4A2, COL18A1, and COL6A1) were highly expressed and had diagnostic significance in ESCA.Conclusion: LGALS1 expression level was elevated in ESCA tissues and might be a potential diagnostic marker for ESCA patients.