Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, and non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) accounts for about 80% of all cases, which is the major subgroup of lung cancer.

G protein-coupled receptor kinase 5 (GRK5) has been demonstrated to play pivotal roles in both development and progression of several pathological conditions including cancer. Here, we found that GRK5 expression was significantly increased in 539 NSCLC cancerous tissues than that in 99 normal non-cancerous tissues by immunohistochemistry analysis; we also showed intensive higher positive staining percentage in female and adenocarcinoma (ADC) NSCLC patients than that in male and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) patients, respectively. In addition, GRK5 high expression NSCLC patients had a worse overall survival rate than the low expression patients. We provided evidence showing that both the mRNA and protein expression levels of GRK5 were increased in NSCLC cancerous cell lines (GLC-82, SPC-A-1, H520, H838, H358, A549, and H1299) comparing with that in normal human bronchial epithelium cell line (BEAS-2B), and identified many GRK5 mutations in NSCLC cancerous tissues. In addition, we found that depletion of GRK5 inhibited NSCLC cancerous cell proliferation, migration in vitro, and xenograft tumor formation in vivo. Furthermore, GRK5 knockdown promoted cell cycle arrest at G2/M phase and induced cellular apoptosis.

In summary, this study reveals an oncogenic role of GRK5 in NSCLC progression, indicating that GRK5 could be used as a new therapeutic target in future.

Li-Ping Jiang, Song-Qing Fan, Qiu-Xia Xiong are the co-first authors of this paper. Yong-Bin Chen, Cui-Ping Yang are the co-corresponding authors.

Link to the article：https://www.nature.com/articles/s41419-018-0299-1.