KLHL14, an ovarian and endometrial-specific gene, is over-expressed in ovarian and endometrial cancer.

Abstract

Ovarian cancer (OC) and endometrial cancer (EC) are two types of the most frequent gynecological malignancies worldwide. However, the prognosis of OC and EC patients remained gloomy. Therefore, there was still an urgent need to identify new biomarkers for early diagnosis and treatment of OC and EC. TCGA datasets were used to screen the KLHL14 expression levels in 18 different types of human cancers. TCGA datasets were also used to analyze the association between KLHL14 expression levels and OS/PFS in OC and EC. Human Protein Atlas was used to detected the KLHL14 protein levels in OC and EC. Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to evaluate the prognostic values of KLHL14 in Ovarian cancer. MAS 3.0 was used to perform GO and KEGG pathway analysis. STRING was used to perform PPI network. KLHL14 was specially expressed in OC and EC samples. Moreover, KLHL14 was found to be up-regulated in all stage of OC and EC samples. By analyzing Kaplan-Meier plotter and TCGA datasets, we found higher KLHL14 expression level was associated with shorter overall and progression-free survival in both OC and EC patients. Furthermore, GO and KEGG analysis of KLHL14 co-expressing genes indicated it played important roles in OC and EC progression. We for the first time reported KLHL14 was specially over-expressed in ovarian and endometrial cancer, up-regulation of KLHL14 was positively associated with worse outcome. Finally, we found knockdown of KLHL14 suppressed OC cell proliferation. KLHL14 could be a potential biomarker and therapy target for OC and EC.