A comprehensive investigation on the receptor BSG expression reveals the potential risk of healthy individuals and cancer patients to 2019-nCoV infection

Sep 21, 2026

Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) is driven by SARS-CoV-2, and basigin (BSG/CD147) is implicated in tumorigenesis while also acting as a newly identified viral entry receptor. The study clarifies BSG expression and distribution in normal individuals versus cancer patients, using bioinformatics and experimental validation across tissues, tumor types, and cell lines. BSG shows broad conservation and ubiquitous normal expression with cancer-associated upregulation, links high BSG levels to poorer survival, and highlights mitochondrial and oxidative phosphorylation-related pathways.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

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Pages23

Reading Time58 min

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Abstract

Background

Methods

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Introduction

[www.aging-us.com](www.aging-us.com) AGING 2024, Vol. 16, No. 6 Research Paper A comprehensive investigation on the receptor BSG expression reveals the potential risk of healthy individuals and cancer patients to 2019-nCoV infection Yongbiao Huang1,*, Haiting Zhou1,*, Yuan Wang1, Lingyan Xiao1, Wan Qin1, Long Li1 1 Department of Oncology, Tongji Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China * Equal contribution Correspondence to: Wan Qin, Long Li; [email:](email: wanqin@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn)[ ](email: wanqin@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn)[wanqin@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn](email: wanqin@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn), [lilong@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn](lilong@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn)[ ](lilong@tjh.tjmu.edu.cn)[Keywords:](Keywords: SARS-CoV-2)[ SARS-CoV-2](Keywords: SARS-CoV-2), COVID-19, BSG, cancer, susceptibility Received: October 25, 2023 Accepted: February 8, 2024 Published: March 13, 2024 Copyright: © 2024 Huang et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. ABSTRACT Background: Coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic is caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), a newly emerging coronavirus. BSG (basigin) is involved in the tumorigenesis of multiple tumors and recently emerged as a novel viral entry receptor for SARS-CoV-2. However, its expression profile in normal individuals and cancer patients are still unclear. Methods: We performed a comprehensive analysis of the expression and distribution of BSG in normal tissues, tumor tissues, and cell lines via bioinformatics analysis and experimental verification. In addition, we investigated the expression of BSG and its isoforms in multiple malignancies and adjacent normal tissues, and explored the prognostic values across pan-cancers. Finally, we conducted function analysis for co-expressed genes with BSG. Results: We found BSG was highly conserved in different species, and was ubiquitously expressed in almost all normal tissues and significantly increased in some types of cancer tissues. Moreover, BSG at mRNA expression level was higher than ACE2 in normal lung tissues, and lung cancer tissues. High expression of BSG indicated shorter overall survival (OS) in multiple tumors. The Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses indicated that BSG is mostly enriched in genes for mitochondria electron transport, oxidoreduction-driven active transmembrane transporter activity, mitochondrial inner membrane, oxidative phosphorylation, and genes involving COVID-19. Conclusions: Our present work emphasized the value of targeting BSG in the treatment of COVID-19 and cancer, and also provided several novel insights for understanding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. INTRODUCTION Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a novel respiratory tract infection caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-COV-2), initially broke out in December 2019 [1–3] . As far, the global confirmed cases are 532,355,835, and the global death cases are 6,300,060 based on the report from the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) ([https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/](https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/)) (June 2022) [4]. SARS-CoV-2 is an enveloped, single-strand RNA virus of the genus Betacoronavirus [5] . Patients with COVID-19 presented lung computed tomography (CT) abnormalities, along with mild flu-like symptoms (e.g., headache, fatigue, cough, nasal congestion and fever [6] . The pathological characteristics of COVID-19 patients are very similar to those of SARS and MERS patients [7] . Middle-aged and older patients with comorbidities are prone to respiratory failure resulting in poor clinical outcome [8] . 5412 SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) is highly homologous to SARS-CoV responsible for an outbreak in 2003 [9] . SARS-CoV-2 share

FAQs

What role does BSG play in SARS-CoV-2 infection according to the study?

BSG (basigin/CD147) is described as a viral entry receptor that can enable SARS-CoV-2 to enter host cells via endocytosis and trigger downstream signaling responses.

How did the researchers analyze BSG expression across normal and cancer samples?

They performed comprehensive expression and distribution analyses using bioinformatics together with experimental verification across normal tissues, tumor tissues, and cell lines.

What clinical implication did the study draw from high BSG expression?

High BSG expression was associated with shorter overall survival in multiple tumors, supporting the potential value of targeting BSG in both COVID-19 and cancer contexts.

Sep 21, 2026

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