Expression signature, prognosis value and immune characteristics of cathepsin F in non-small cell lung cancer identified by bioinformatics assessment

BACKGROUND: In recent years, immunotherapies and targeted therapies contribute to population-level improvement in NSCLC cancer-specific survival, however, the two novel therapeutic options have mainly benefit patients containing mutated driven genes. Thus, to explore other potential genes related with immunity or targeted therapies may provide novel options to improve survival of lung cancer patients without mutated driven genes. CTSF is unique in human cysteine proteinases. Presently, CTSF has been detected in several cell lines of lung cancer, but its role in progression and prognosis of lung cancer remains unclear. METHODS: CTSF expression and clinical datasets of lung cancer patients were obtained from GTEx, TIMER, CCLE, THPA, and TCGA, respectively. Association of CTSF expression with clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of lung cancer patients was analyzed using UALCAN and Kaplan–Meier Plotter, respectively. LinkedOmics were used to analyze correlation between CTSF and CTSF co-expressed genes. Protein–protein interaction and gene–gene interaction were analyzed using STRING and GeneMANIA, respectively. Association of CTSF with molecular markers of immune cells and immunomodulators was analyzed with Immunedeconv and TISIDB, respectively. RESULTS: CTSF expression was currently only available for patients with NSCLC. Compared to normal tissues, CTSF was downregulated in NSCLC samples and high expressed CTSF was correlated with favorable prognosis of NSCLC. Additionally, CTSF expression was correlated with that of immune cell molecular markers and immunomodulators both in LUAD and LUSC. Noticeably, high expression of CTSF-related CTLA-4 was found to be associated with better OS of LUAD patients. Increased expression of CTSF-related LAG-3 was related with poor prognosis of LUAD patients while there was no association between CTSF-related PD-1/PD-L1 and prognosis of LUAD patients. Moreover, increased expression of CTSF-related CD27 was related with poor prognosis of LUAD patients while favorable prognosis of LUSC patients. CONCLUSIONS: CTSF might play an anti-tumor effect via regulating immune response of NSCLC. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12890-021-01796-w.