SGEF is a potential prognostic and therapeutic target for lung adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: SH3-containing guanine nucleotide exchange factor (SGEF), a RhoG-specific guanine nucleotide exchange factor (GEF), was consider as a key signal that determines cancer cell invasion. Although SGEF has been considered to highly express in glioma and prostate cancer. However, it is not well illustrated in LAC. METHODS: In this experiment, expression of SGEF was detected in 92 LAC and corresponding normal tissue samples by immunohistochemistry. In addition, we evaluated the invasion and migration of lung adenocarcinoma cells by the gain and loss of SGEF expression. Furthermore, RhoG activity was measured by GST pull-down assay. RESULTS: SGEF is highly expressed in LAC tissues than in normal lung tissues and was associated with the TNM stage. Lung adenocarcinoma patients with low SGEF subgroup had longer overall survival compared to those with high expression. Furthermore, univariate analysis showed that SGEF expression was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival in lung adenocarcinoma. Silencing of SGEF effectively suppressed the invasion and migration of human lung adenocarcinoma cells in vitro by inhibiting RhoG activity, and over-expression of SGEF could reverse this phenomena. CONCLUSION: SGEF is a novel prognostic target in human lung adenocarcinoma. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (10.1186/s12957-018-1331-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.