Pan-cancer characterization of HMGA1 reveals its oncogenic role in tumor microenvironment and stemness: functional validation in pancreatic cancer migration and invasion.

Abstract

BACKGROUND: HMGA1 is a chromatin-associated oncogenic factor implicated in tumor progression, epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), stemness, and metastasis. However, its pan-cancer expression and prognostic patterns, epigenetic activation, and relationship with malignant-cell stemness/plasticity and tumor microenvironment (TME) remodeling in pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD) remain incompletely defined. This study aimed to systematically characterize HMGA1 across cancers and clarify its clinical and biological relevance in PAAD. METHODS: Pan-cancer transcriptomic, clinical, genetic, methylation, immune, and stemness data were integrated from multiple public databases. PAAD single-cell RNA sequencing data were analyzed to localize HMGA1 expression, infer malignant-cell pseudotime, calculate a stemness module score, and assess ligand-receptor communication using CellChat. Public HMGA1-knockdown RNA sequencing data were reanalyzed to evaluate transcriptional remodeling. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA)-PAAD expression and methylation data were used to assess TME-remodeling, immune-suppression, stemness/plasticity, cytokine/chemokine, checkpoint, and promoter-methylation features. HMGA1 expression and function were further examined using immunohistochemistry (IHC), quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, Western blotting, wound-healing assays, and Transwell migration and invasion assays. RESULTS: HMGA1 was upregulated in most tumor types, and high expression was associated with unfavorable survival in multiple cancers, including PAAD. In PAAD, HMGA1 was enriched in malignant epithelial cells and positively correlated with pseudotime (Spearman's rho =0.594), while the stemness module score increased along pseudotime (rho =0.748). HMGA1-high malignant cells showed markedly stronger CellChat-inferred outgoing communication, predominantly involving extracellular matrix (ECM)-receptor, adhesion-related, and selected immunomodulatory ligand-receptor axes. HMGA1 knockdown was associated with broad remodeling of EMT, TGF-β, Hedgehog, IL6/JAK/STAT3, KRAS, and cancer stem cell/stemness-related programs rather than uniform suppression of these programs. HMGA1 promoter methylation was inversely correlated with HMGA1 expression (rho =-0.633) and the TME-remodeling score (rho =-0.347). HMGA1 was associated with selected mediators, including PPIA, PLAU, ANXA1, LGALS9, TGFB1, CD276, and CD47, but not with a generalized checkpoint-high phenotype. Functionally, HMGA1 knockdown significantly reduced pancreatic cancer (PC) cell migration and invasion. CONCLUSIONS: These findings support an association-based model in which promoter hypomethylation-associated HMGA1 activation is linked to malignant epithelial stemness/plasticity, ECM/adhesion-dominant TME remodeling, selected immunomodulatory programs, and aggressive PAAD phenotypes. Further mechanistic and clinical validation is required before HMGA1 can be used for therapeutic stratification or immunotherapy-response prediction.