Prognostic biomarkers for lung adenocarcinoma based on Mendelian randomization analysis

Abstract Background Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a multifaceted disease with diverse locations and timing of gene mutations, histology, and molecular pathogenesis. As a result, identifying target genes for the treatment of patients with LUAD has become a major challenge. Method We downloaded the gene expression profiles of 220 patients with LUAD from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database and found the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between control and treatment groups. Mendelian randomization (MR) analysis was performed between the exposure gene eQTL ID and ieu-a-965 to obtain GWAS summary data. Sensitivity analysis was used to test for the presence of pleiotropy and heterogeneity in the instrumental variables. We further conducted MR analysis to explore the potential intersecting genes between DEGs and specific genes. Moreover, GESA and over survival analyses were performed on the intersection gene. Result We combined GEO and GWAS data to identify one upregulated and two downregulated genes associated with LUAD risk using IVW as the primary analytical method. And observed that the survival of the high-expression group of ANGPT1 and CD36 was significantly higher than that of the low-expression group. POU2AF1 were inconsistent with the results obtained in the Kaplan–Meier analysis and lacked statistical significance in the GSE70770 cohort Conclusion Our results confirmed two specific target genes CD36 and ANGPT1 based on MR analysis, providing new insights into the role of these target genes in mediating the development of LUAD.