Flotilin-1 promotes the tumorigenicity and progression of malignant phenotype in human lung adenocarcinoma

ABSTRACTLung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) accounts for the most common histological subtype of lung cancer which remains the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. The discovery of more sensitive and specific novel target biomarkers for predicting the development and progression of LUAD is imperative. Flotillin-1 (Flot-1) has been reported to have important roles in the progression of several tumor types but not been reported in the progression of LUAD. Here, we demonstrated that the expression of flotillin-1 was upregulated in 5 LUAD cells. Moreover, multiple approaches were used to explore the tumorigenicity of flotillin-1 in LUAD cell lines. The expression levels of flotillin-1 were analyzed by immunoblotting after overexpression and siRNA-based knockdown. Cell proliferation, scratch wound healing, transwell migration and matrigel invasion and xenograft tumor growth assays were used to determine the role of flotillin-1 in LUAD progression. Downregulation of flotillin-1 reversed, whereas upregulation of flot...