Articolo in rivista, 2020, ENG, 10.1002/2211-5463.12984

An investigation into the molecular basis of cancer comorbidities in coronavirus infection

Facchiano, Antonio; Facchiano, Francesco; Facchiano, Angelo

IDI IRCCS; Ist Super Sanita; CNR

Comorbidities in COVID-19 patients often worsen clinical conditions and may represent death predictors. Here, the expression of five genes, known to encode coronavirus receptors/interactors (ACE2,TMPRSS2,CLEC4M,DPP4andTMPRSS11D), was investigated in normal and cancer tissues, and their molecular relationships with clinical comorbidities were investigated. Using expression data from GENT2 databases, we evaluated gene expression in all anatomical districts from 32 normal tissues in 3902 individuals. Functional relationships with body districts were analyzed bychilibot. We performed DisGeNet,genemaniaand DAVID analyses to identify human diseases associated with these genes. Transcriptomic expression levels were then analyzed in 31 cancer types and healthy controls from approximately 43 000 individuals, using GEPIA2 and GENT2 databases. By performing receiver operating characteristic analysis, the area under the curve (AUC) was used to discriminate healthy from cancer patients. Coronavirus receptors were found to be expressed in several body districts. Moreover, the five genes were found to associate with acute respiratory syndrome, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases and cancer (i.e. the most frequent COVID-19 comorbidities). Their expression levels were found to be significantly altered in cancer types, including colon, kidney, liver, testis, thyroid and skin cancers (P < 0.0001); AUC > 0.80 suggests that TMPRSS2, CLEC4M and DPP4 are relevant markers of kidney, liver, and thyroid cancer, respectively. The five coronavirus receptors are related to all main COVID-19 comorbidities and three show significantly different expression in cancer versus control tissues. Further investigation into their role may help in monitoring other comorbidities, as well as for follow-up of patients who have recovered from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

FEBS openbio 10 (11), pp. 2363–2374

Keywords

comorbidity, coronavirus, kidney cancer, prostate cancer, skin cancer, thyroid cancer

CNR authors

Facchiano Angelo

CNR institutes

ISA – Istituto di scienza dell'alimentazione

ID: 439955

Year: 2020

Type: Articolo in rivista

Creation: 2020-12-22 14:12:29.000

Last update: 2020-12-22 14:21:05.000

CNR authors

External links

OAI-PMH: Dublin Core

OAI-PMH: Mods

OAI-PMH: RDF

DOI: 10.1002/2211-5463.12984

External IDs

CNR OAI-PMH: oai:it.cnr:prodotti:439955

DOI: 10.1002/2211-5463.12984

ISI Web of Science (WOS): 000579024500001