Promotes Gastric Cancer Metastasis by Modulating Focal Adhesion Pathway and Tumor Microenvironment.

Little is known about the oncogenic role or biological function of copine Ⅷ (CPNE8) in gastric cancer (GC). Based on TCGA database, we screened for and analyzed the expression of in GC. The correlations between and clinical features were analyzed using TCGA and GEO databases. The prognostic value of was assessed using Cox analysis and Kaplan-Meier curves. The results showed that increased expression of was positively correlated with metastasis and can be considered an independent prognostic risk factor for poor survival. We found that can promote cell proliferation, migration, and invasiveness in GC using and experiments. Our study demonstrated that promotes tumor progression via regulation of focal adhesion, and these effects can be rescued by focal adhesion kinase () inhibitor GSK2256098 or knockdown of . In addition, was correlated significantly with the infiltration of cancer-associated fibroblasts and immune cells, as demonstrated by various algorithms, and high expression predicted poor efficacy of immune checkpoint therapy. Our findings suggest that modulates focal adhesion and tumor microenvironment to promote GC progression and invasiveness and could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker in GC.