Identification of expression profiles associated to oral squamous cell carcinoma development by cDNA microarrays (1047.13)

Abstract

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) development still a poorly understood phenomenon, in terms of gene expression profiles which might be involved in alterations leading to high invasiveness and aggressive behavior. Also, it stills unclear how gene expression changes during OSCC development, in terms of tumor size. Using 36 samples of OSCC cases, we performed cDNA and lincRNA microarrays, comprising whole human genome and more than 7000 lincRNAs, in order to identify gene profiles with similar behavior throughout T1 to T4 tumor staging. Also, 10 differentially expressed genes were tested individually using qRT‐PCR. We found 7 different gene expression profiles, either with a rise in expression levels, or decrease in expression levels, between T1, T2, T3 and T4 TNM staging. The seven different gene expression profiles showed 58 differentially expressed genes, including an increased expression of immune response‐related family genes, and decreased expression of zinc finger proteins. In RT‐PCR experiments, we found significantly correlations between CD274 (PD‐L1) and tumor size (p=0.043), lymphatic invasion (p=0.047) and metastatic lymph node (p=0.001); BLNK and perineural invasion (p=0.021); ABL2 and tumor size (p=0.039); HOXB9 and tumor size (p=0.026); and between ZNF813 and tumor size (p=0.039). Our study shows the existence of several genes with similar expression patterns during OSCC development, and also points to novel genes, which has not yet been implicated in oral carcinogenesis, providing new potential targets in oral cancer research.Grant Funding Source: Supported by FAPESP grants 2010/08637‐0 and 2010/08400‐0