BMI1 and lung adenocarcinoma: Similarly, the expression of Bmi-1 progressively increased while p-AMPK was decreased along with increases in pathological grade of lung adenocarcinomas; the order of intensity of p-AMPK (T172) appeared to be stageI > stage II > stage III (spearman correlation = −0.397, p < 0.05), while Bmi-1 expression was stage I < stage II < stage III (spearman correlation = 0.389, p < 0.05) (Table 2, Figure 2).