The FLNA Gene in Tumour-Educated Platelets Can Be Utilised to Identify High-Risk Populations for NSCLCs

Abstract

Selective screening of the population based on NSCLC risk is an effective technique for minimising overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Platelets and the components can be used as liquid-biopsy markers, potentially assessing the risk of NSCLC, which are easily deployed in clinical applications. Platelet RNA sequencing datasets were analysed to identify specific genes derived from NSCLC patients and healthy donors. Then, expressions of the selected gene were validated in a clinical trial. Not only the availability of the specific gene in differentiating NSCLC patients from healthy donors but also from patients with benign nodules was estimated respectively. Finally, the values of the specific TEP-gene in metastasis and survival prognosis were also evaluated. FLNA was selected based on the GSE datasets, of which mRNA expression levels were higher in platelets from NSCLC patients than in healthy donors and also higher than in benign patients. To discriminate the malignant patients from the healthy individuals, FLNA got an AUC for the ROC curve of 0.716. When discriminating from the benign individuals, FLNA got an AUC of 0.705. In addition, an AUC of 0.595 was found when the metastatic group was distinguished from the non-metastatic group using the relative quantitative results of FLNA, and it seemed that the high-FLNA-expression group had a poorer long-term survival rate than the low-expression group. These findings suggested that high expression of FLNA in TEPs may indicate the incidence and metastasis of NSCLC and serve as a biomarker for high-risk estimation for NSCLC.