Low expression of dendritic cell-specific intercellular adhesion molecule-grabbing nonintegrin-related protein in lung cancer and significant correlations with brain metastasis and natural killer cells

Dendritic cell-specific intercellular adhesion molecule-grabbing nonintegrin-related protein (DC-SIGNR) is a type II transmembrane protein which has been reported to bind a variety of pathogens as well as participate in immunoregulation. But the association between the level of DC-SIGNR and lung cancer is unknown. To investigate the clinical diagnostic significance of DC-SIGNR in lung cancer, we investigated serum DC-SIGNR levels in 173 lung cancer patients and 134 healthy individuals using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Results showed that serum DC-SIGNR levels in lung cancer patients were lower than that in healthy controls (P = 0.0003). A cut-off value of 3.8998 ng/L for DC-SIGNR predicted the presence of lung cancer with 78.03 % sensitivity and 49.25 % specificity (area under the curve = 0.6212, P = 0.0003). Strikingly, serum DC-SIGNR levels were significantly higher in lung cancer patients with brain metastasis compared to those without metastasis (P = 0.0283). Moreover, the serum concentrations of DC-SIGNR in lung cancer patients also correlated significantly with serum natural killer cells percentage (P = 0.0017). In addition, immunohistochemistry assay demonstrated that the expression of DC-SIGNR in lung tissues of 31 lung cancer patients and 13 tuberculosis patients was significantly lower than that in 18 normal lung tissues (P = 0.0418, 0.0289), and there is no significant difference between tuberculosis tissues and lung cancer tissues (P = 0.2696). These results suggest that DC-SIGNR maybe a promising biological molecule that has the potential for clinical research of lung cancer, whereas its underlying roles are needed to be investigated in further studies. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11010-015-2465-4) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.