A preliminary analysis of prognostic genes in advanced laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma patients with postoperative radiotherapy.

Abstract

Advanced laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) has a high mortality rate, and the prognosis is poor. However, the underlying molecular biological mechanisms bringing about the development and progression of advanced LSCC are not entirely clarified. This study aimed to find out the potential biomarkers to predict the prognosis in advanced LSCC patients who had undergone postoperative radiotherapy alone. The next-generation sequencing of RNA was performed to detect the mRNAs expression profiling in 10 advanced LSCC samples, comprised of 5 samples from LSCC patients with favorable outcome and 5 samples from paired patients with poor outcome. Then bioinformatics analysis including Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway were used to find out functional core genes that were significantly different between the two groups. 1630 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were confirmed to have significant differences between the two groups. 53 GO terms and 19 pathways which were closely related to the DEGs were identified. Finally, 52 intersection DEGs which were both related to the top three GO terms and pathways were identified. The expression of several core genes was confirmed with RT-qPCR in tissues from another 75 patients. RT-qPCR confirmed that the genes of c-JUN, LYN, PIK3R2, and TNFAIP3 were significantly differentially expressed between the two groups, which was in accordance with the RNA sequencing data. The DEGs identified above may be potential prognostic markers for advanced LSCC patients with postoperative radiotherapy, and may provide essential guidance for following-up.