COVID-19 disease and malignant cancers: The impact for the furin gene expression in susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2

Li, Dabing; Liu, Xiaoyan; Zhang, Lianmei; He, Jiayue; Chen, Xianmao; Liu, Shuguang; Fu, Jiewen; Fu, Shangyi; Chen, Hanchun; Fu, Junjiang; Cheng, Jingliang

Furin is a proprotein convertase that activates different kinds of regulatory proteins, including SARS-CoV-2 spike protein which contains an additional furin-specific cleavage site. It is essential in predicting cancer patients' susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and the disease outcomes due to varying furin expressions in tumor tissues. In this study, we analyzed furin's expression, methylation, mutation rate, functional enrichment, survival rate and COVID-19 outcomes in normal and cancer tissues using online databases, and our IHC. As a result, furin presented with biased expression profiles in normal tissues, showing 12.25-fold higher than ACE2 in the lungs. The furin expression in tumors were significantly increased in ESCA and TGCT, and decreased in DLBC and THYM, indicating furin may play critical mechanistic functions in COVID-19 viral entry into cells in these cancer patients. Line with furin over/downexpression, furin promoter hypo-/hyper-methylation may be the regulatory cause of disease and lead to pathogenesis of ESCA and THYM. Furthermore, presence of FURIN-201 isoform with functional domains (P_proprotein, Peptidase_S8 and S8_pro-domain) is highest in all cancer types in comparison to other isoforms, demonstrating its use in tumorigenesis and SARS-Cov-2 entry into tumor tissues. Furin mutation frequency was highest in UCES, and its mutation might elevate ACE2 expression in LUAD and UCEC, reduce ACE2 expression in COAD, elevate HSPA5 expression in PAAD, and elevate TMPRSS2 expression in BRCA. These results showed that furin mutations mostly increased expression of ACE2, HSPA5, and TMPRSS2 in certain cancers, indicating furin mutations might facilitate COVID-19 cell entry in cancer patients. In addition, high expression of furin was significantly inversely correlated with long overall survival (OS) in LGG and correlated with long OS in COAD and KIRC, indicating that it could be used as a favorable prognostic marker for cancer patients' survival. GO and KEGG demonstrated that furin was mostly enriched in genes for metabolic and biosynthetic processes, retinal dehydrogenase activity, tRNA methyltransferase activity, and genes involving COVID-19, further supporting its role in COVID-19 and cancer metabolism. Moreover, Cordycepin (CD) inhibited furin expression in a dosage dependent manner. Altogether, furin's high expression might not only implies increased susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 and higher severity of COVID-19 symptoms in cancer patients, but also it highlights the need for cancer treatment and therapy during the COVID-19 pandemic. CD might have a potential to develop an anti-SARS-CoV-2 drug through inhibiting furin expression.