Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, The Third Medical Center of PLA General Hospital, Beijing, China.
Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, China.
Gene. 2022 Jun 15;827:146461. doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2022.146461. Epub 2022 Mar 28.
BGN belongs to class of small leucine rich proteoglycans, which is high expression in plenty of human cancers. However, the detailed role of BGN remains unclear in Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSC).
In this study, we assessed the transcriptional expression, protein expression, prognosis, co-expressed genes, functional enrichment, and hub genes in HNSC patients based on the data published in the following databases: ONCOMINE, GEPIA, GEO, LinkedOmics, and HPA databases. Data from the TCGA database was used to analyze the correlations between BGN expression and different clinicopathological features, as well as prognostic analysis.
We found that the expression of BGN is higher in patients with HNSC than in control tissues. Pathologically, high BGN expression was significantly correlated with T3 and T4 stage. Besides, high expression of BGN is a poor prognostic factor for overall surviva, not disease free survival. The co-expression genes associated with BGN expression exhibited enriched in various function and pathway, such as extracellular matrix, mitochondrion, PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. A total of 10 hub genes were identified from the co-expressed genes, within which five genes, including FSTL1, LAMB1, SDC2, VCAN, and IGFBP7, were significantly increased in patient's with HNSC. BGN exhibited weak correlations with tumor-infiltrating CD4+ T, macrophages cell, and dendritic cells. Futhermore, many markers of infiltrating immune cells, such as Treg, showed different BGN-related immune infiltration patterns. BGN expression showed strong correlations with diverse immune marker sets in COAD and STAD.
Our results demonstrated that BGN is high expression in HNSC and is a poor prognostic factor for clinical outcome in patients with HNSC. It could serve as a potential prognostic biomarker for patients survival in HNSC.
BGN 属于小富含亮氨酸的蛋白聚糖类，在大量人类癌症中高表达。然而，BGN 在头颈部鳞状细胞癌（HNSC）中的详细作用仍不清楚。
在这项研究中，我们根据 ONCOMINE、GEPIA、GEO、LinkedOmics 和 HPA 数据库中发表的数据，评估了 HNSC 患者的转录表达、蛋白表达、预后、共表达基因、功能富集和枢纽基因。来自 TCGA 数据库的数据用于分析 BGN 表达与不同临床病理特征之间的相关性以及预后分析。
我们发现 BGN 在 HNSC 患者中的表达高于对照组织。病理上，BGN 高表达与 T3 和 T4 期显著相关。此外，BGN 高表达是总生存期不良的预后因素，而不是无病生存期。与 BGN 表达相关的共表达基因在各种功能和途径中富集，如细胞外基质、线粒体、PI3K-Akt 信号通路。从共表达基因中总共鉴定出 10 个枢纽基因，其中包括 FSTL1、LAMB1、SDC2、VCAN 和 IGFBP7，这些基因在 HNSC 患者中显著增加。BGN 与肿瘤浸润性 CD4+T 细胞、巨噬细胞和树突状细胞的相关性较弱。此外，许多浸润免疫细胞的标志物，如 Treg，表现出不同的与 BGN 相关的免疫浸润模式。BGN 表达与 COAD 和 STAD 中的多种免疫标志物集表现出强烈的相关性。
我们的研究结果表明，BGN 在 HNSC 中高表达，是 HNSC 患者临床结局的不良预后因素。它可以作为 HNSC 患者生存的潜在预后生物标志物。
