Elevated SLC2A1 Expression Correlates with Poor Prognosis in Patients with Surgically Resected Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Study Based on Immunohistochemical Analysis and Bioinformatics

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) accounts for an increasing proportion of non-small-cell lung cancer and an increasing number of cancer-related deaths worldwide. However, few biomarkers are available for prognosis and patient stratification. In all eight datasets from the Oncomine and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) LUAD cohorts, solute carrier family 2 member 1 (SLC2A1) was significantly more highly expressed in LUAD tissue than in normal lung tissue. High SLC2A1 expression was also significantly (p < 0.05) associated with a poor prognosis in stage I, II, and III subgroups using the Kaplan-Meier plotter. In the National Cancer Center of China (NCC) cohort, SLC2A1 expression correlated significantly (p < 0.05) with several parameters, including sex, smoking history, tumor size, tumor differentiation, T stage, N stage, and pathologic TNM stage. Moreover, multivariate Cox regression indicated SLC2A1 to be an independent prognostic factor (p < 0.05) in both TCGA and NCC cohorts. Eleven hallmark pathways were significantly enriched (p < 0.01, false discovery rate <0.25) in the high-SLC2A1 expression group. SLC2A1 is a promising biomarker that can be used to predict the prognosis of LUAD.