Effect of calumenin on metastasis and invasion of gastric cancer and prognosis of patients

‍Objective‍ ‍To investigate the expression of calumenin (CALU) in gastric cancer and its effect on metastasis and invasion of gastric cancer, and analyze its relationship with the prognosis of gastric cancer patients. Methods‍ ‍The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was used to analyze the expression level of CALU in gastric cancer and its impact on patient prognosis. A total of 102 pairs of gastric cancer and paracancerous tissue samples were collected from 189 gastric cancer patients who underwent partial gastrectomy in First Affiliated Hospital of Army Medical University from January 2018 to December 2022. The expression of CALU in gastric cancer and paracancerous tissues was detected by immunohistochemical assay, and the relationship of its expression with clinicopathological parameters was statistically analyzed. After gastric cancer cells with CALU knockdown and overexpression were constructed, and the efficiencies of knockdown and overexpression were evaluated by Western blotting as well as RT-qPCR. Transwell assay was applied to determine the effect of CALU on the migration and invasion abilities of gastric cancer cells. Results‍ ‍Bioinformation analysis found that CALU was significantly highly expressed in gastric cancer tissues (P<0.05), and its expression level was negatively correlated with the prognosis of patients (P<0.05). Immunohistochemical results showed that the expression level of CALU was obviously highly in gastric cancer tissues than the paracancerous tissues (P<0.01), and its level was positively correlated with the depth of infiltration (P<0.01), lymph node metastasis (P<0.01), and TNM stage (P<0.05). Statistical analysis revealed that the clinical data of 102 patients showed that CALU expression was positively correlated with the TNM stage (P=0.021) and T stage (P<0.001) and N stage (P=0.028). CALU knockdown significantly inhibited the migration and invasion abilities of gastric cancer cells (P<0.01), while over-expression obtained the opposite results. Conclusion‍ ‍CALU is highly expressed in gastric cancer tissues and promotes metastasis and invasion of gastric cancer and thus leads to poor prognosis in patients.