Department of Radiation Oncology, Guangxi Medical University First Affiliated Hospital, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, People's Republic of China.
Guangxi Tumor Radiation Therapy Clinical Medical Research Center, Nanning, 530021, Guangxi, People's Republic of China.
BMC Cancer. 2021 Apr 12;21(1):395. doi: 10.1186/s12885-021-08039-5.
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer worldwide, associated with a high rate of morbidity and mortality. However, the target genes of miR-221-3p and the underlying mechanism involved in HNSCC are still not clear. Therefore, in the current study, we studied the role of miR-221-3p in the HNSCC.
Tissues collected from 48 control and 21 HNSCC patients were processed to check the differential expression of miR-221-3p by RT-qPCR. Overexpression of microRNA-221-3p (miR-221-3p) is significantly correlated to the onset and progression of HNSCC. We also conducted the meta-analysis of the cancer literature from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) and the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to estimate the expression of miR-221-3p in HNSCC. The miR-221-3p target genes in the HNSCC were predicted with the miRWalk and TCGA databases, and functionally annotated via the Gene Ontology. Finally, Spearman's analysis was used to determine the role of the related target genes in important pathways involved in the development of HNSCC.
We observed a significantly higher expression of miR-221-3p in HNSCC compared to the normal with a summary receiver operating characteristic (sROC) of 0.86(95% Cl: 0.83,0.89). The KEGG and GO comprehensive analysis predicted that miR-221-3p might be involved in the development of HNSCC through the following metabolic pathways, viz. Drug metabolism - cytochrome P450 UGT1A7 and MAOB may be important genes for the role of miR-221-3p.
Based on bioinformatics analysis, our results indicate that miR-221-3p may be used as a non-invasive and hypersensitive biomarker in the diagnosis. Thus, it can be concluded that miR-221-3p may be an extremely important gene locus involved in the process of the deterioration and eventual tumorigenesis of HNSCC. Hopefully, additional work will validate its usefulness as a target for future clinical research.
头颈部鳞状细胞癌（HNSCC）是全球第六大常见癌症，发病率和死亡率都很高。然而，miR-221-3p 的靶基因以及其在 HNSCC 中的潜在机制仍不清楚。因此，在本研究中，我们研究了 miR-221-3p 在 HNSCC 中的作用。
收集 48 例对照和 21 例 HNSCC 患者的组织，通过 RT-qPCR 检测 miR-221-3p 的差异表达。miR-221-3p 的过表达与 HNSCC 的发生和进展显著相关。我们还对癌症基因组图谱（TCGA）和基因表达综合数据库（GEO）中的癌症文献进行了荟萃分析，以评估 miR-221-3p 在 HNSCC 中的表达。使用 miRWalk 和 TCGA 数据库预测 HNSCC 中的 miR-221-3p 靶基因，并通过基因本体论进行功能注释。最后，使用 Spearman 分析确定相关靶基因在 HNSCC 发展相关重要途径中的作用。
与正常组织相比，HNSCC 中 miR-221-3p 的表达明显升高，汇总受试者工作特征（sROC）为 0.86（95%Cl：0.83，0.89）。KEGG 和 GO 综合分析预测，miR-221-3p 可能通过以下代谢途径参与 HNSCC 的发生：药物代谢-细胞色素 P450 UGT1A7 和 MAOB 可能是 miR-221-3p 作用的重要基因。
基于生物信息学分析，我们的结果表明 miR-221-3p 可作为诊断的非侵入性和高敏感生物标志物。因此，可以得出结论，miR-221-3p 可能是参与 HNSCC 恶化和最终肿瘤发生的极其重要的基因座。希望进一步的工作将验证其作为未来临床研究靶点的有用性。
