Bhat Mohd Younis, Nanjappa Vishalakshi, Brait Mariana, Sidrnasky David, Chatterjee Aditi, Advani Jayshree
Institute of Bioinformatics, International Technology Park, Bangalore, 560066, India.
Manipal Academy of Higher Education, Manipal, India.
Discov Oncol. 2025 Aug 2;16(1):1458. doi: 10.1007/s12672-025-03308-2.
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is one of the most prevalent cancers worldwide with a high mortality in the advanced setting. Smoking and excessive alcohol consumption are major risk factors for the occurrence of HNSCC and contribute to a poor prognosis with continued use. In this study, we sought to identify the miRNAs that are dysregulated in response to smoking and alcohol consumption. miRNA-Seq datasets of HNSCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were queried and included patients with (i) smoking exposure only (ii) alcohol consumption only (iii) exposure to both smoking and alcohol and (iv) no history of smoking or drinking alcohol. Our analysis led to the identification of 43 and 26 miRNAs that were differentially expressed in HNSCC patients with smoking only exposure and drinking only consumption, respectively. In addition, 37 miRNAs were altered in HNSCC patients who had a history of both smoking exposure and alcohol consumption compared to HNSCC patients with neither. The experimentally validated targets of these miRNAs were obtained from the miRTarbase database. Analysis of this dataset revealed that each exposure cohort exhibited distinct biological processes and pathways. The findings of this study indicate that smoking or alcohol consumption or both imparts different effects on miRNA expression which may lead to aberrant cell growth and eventually promote tumor progression and metastasis through distinct biologic effects.
头颈部鳞状细胞癌（HNSCC）是全球最常见的癌症之一，在晚期具有较高的死亡率。吸烟和过量饮酒是HNSCC发生的主要危险因素，持续使用会导致预后不良。在本研究中，我们试图鉴定因吸烟和饮酒而失调的miRNA。查询了来自癌症基因组图谱（TCGA）的HNSCC患者的miRNA-Seq数据集，包括以下患者：（i）仅吸烟暴露；（ii）仅饮酒；（iii）同时暴露于吸烟和饮酒；（iv）无吸烟或饮酒史。我们的分析导致鉴定出分别在仅吸烟暴露和仅饮酒的HNSCC患者中差异表达的43个和26个miRNA。此外，与既无吸烟暴露也无饮酒史的HNSCC患者相比，有吸烟暴露和饮酒史的HNSCC患者中有37个miRNA发生了改变。这些miRNA的经实验验证的靶标来自miRTarbase数据库。对该数据集的分析表明，每个暴露队列都表现出不同的生物学过程和途径。本研究结果表明，吸烟或饮酒或两者对miRNA表达具有不同影响，这可能导致细胞生长异常，并最终通过不同的生物学效应促进肿瘤进展和转移。
