SCD1 is associated with tumor promotion, late stage and poor survival in lung adenocarcinoma

// Jun Huang 1, 3, * , Xing-Xing Fan 2, * , Jiaxi He 1, * , Hui Pan 1 , Run-Ze Li 2 , Liyan Huang 1 , Zebo Jiang 2 , Xiao-Jun Yao 2 , Liang Liu 2 , Elaine Lai-Han Leung 2 , Jian-Xing He 1,3 1 State Key Laboratory of Respiratory Disease, Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Disease, The 1st Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, China 2 State Key Laboratory of Quality Research in Chinese Medicine/Macau Institute for Applied Research in Medicine and Health, Macau University of Science and Technology, Macau (SAR), China 3 Guangdong Cardiovascular Institute, Guangdong General Hospital, Guangdong Academy of Medical Sciences, Guangzhou, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Jian-Xing He, email: hejx@vip.163.com Elaine Lai-Han Leung, email: lhleung@must.edu.mo Keywords: lung adenocarcinoma, SCD1, EGFR, biomarker, lipid metabolism Received: November 12, 2015      Accepted: April 23, 2016      Published: May 19, 2016 ABSTRACT The discovery of Warburg effect opens a new era in anti-cancer therapy. Aerobic glycolysis is regarded as a hallmark of cancer cells and increasing literatures indicates that metabolic changes are critical for the maintenance and progression of cancer cells. Besides aerobic glycolysis, increased fatty acid synthesis is also required for the rapid growth of cancer cells, and is considered as one of the most typical metabolic symbols of cancer either. Thus, targeting fatty acid metabolism may provide a potential avenue for the diagnosis and therapeutic treatment of cancer. In this study, we have identified Sterol-CoA desaturase-1 (SCD1) which is the rate-limiting enzyme of unsaturated fatty acid synthesis, universally and highly expressed in lung adenocarcinoma and was required for the cell proliferation, migration and invasion. Both in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrated that high expression of SCD1 remarkably enhanced the ability of tumor formation and invasion, while knockdown of SCD1 significantly repressed tumorigenesis and induced cell apoptosis. Clinical association study suggested that high expression of SCD1 is more frequently observed in late stage patients and presents poor prognosis. Taken together, our results suggested that SCD1 is a potentially novel biomarker of lung adenocarcinoma, and targeting SCD1 may represent a new anti-cancer strategy.