FKBP1A upregulation correlates with poor prognosis and increased metastatic potential of HNSCC.
Dhruti PatelAarsh M DabhiCrismita DmelloMahendra SeerviK M SnehaPavan AgrawalMayurbhai H SahaniDeepak KanojiaPublished in: Cell biology international (2021)
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the 6th most common malignancy globally. The etiology of HNSCC is multifactorial, including cellular stress induced by tobacco smoking, tobacco chewing excess alcohol consumption, and Human Papillomavirus (HPV) infection. The induction of stress includes autophagy as one of the response pathways in maintaining homeostatic equilibrium. We evaluated the expression of autophagy-related genes in HNSCC tissues from RNA sequencing datasets and identified 19 genes correlated with poor prognosis and 18 genes correlated with improved prognosis of HNSCC patients. Further analysis of independent gene expression datasets revealed that ATG12, HSP90AB1, and FKBP1A are overexpressed in HNSCC and correlate with poor prognosis, whereas the overexpression of ANXA1, FOS, and ULK3 correlates with improved prognosis. Using independent datasets, we also found that ATG12, HSP90AB1, and FKBP1A expression increased with an increase in the T-stage of HNSCC. Among all the datasets analyzed, FKBP1A was overexpressed in HNSCC and was strongly associated with lymph node metastasis in multiple in silico datasets. In conclusion, our analysis indicates dynamic alterations in autophagy genes during HNSCC and warrants further investigation, specifically on FKBP1A and its role in tumor progression and metastasis. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
Keyphrases
- poor prognosis
- long non coding rna
- gene expression
- lymph node metastasis
- rna seq
- cell death
- alcohol consumption
- endoplasmic reticulum stress
- squamous cell carcinoma
- single cell
- genome wide
- signaling pathway
- end stage renal disease
- oxidative stress
- chronic kidney disease
- dna methylation
- small cell lung cancer
- heat stress
- heat shock protein
- newly diagnosed
- cell proliferation
- prognostic factors
- molecular docking
- heat shock
- climate change