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Potential ferroptosis-related diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in laryngeal cancer

  • Laryngology
  • Published:
European Archives of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Purpose

Laryngeal cancer (LC) is a common malignant tumor of the head and neck. However, the relationship between ferroptosis and LC is still unclear. The aim of this study was to identify potential ferroptosis-related biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis in LC.

Methods

We screened differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to ferroptosis in LC from the TCGA and FerrDb database. DEGs were identified and enrichment by GO/KEGG, GSEA, GSVA analysis. PPI analysis was performed using String and Cytoscape, then hub genes were extracted. Furthermore, ROC analysis, pan-cancer analysis, gene mutation analysis, immune infiltration correlation analysis and clinical correlation analysis of hub genes were performed.

Results

A total of 59 DEGs were screened, which were more significantly enriched in biological processes and involved in HIF-1 signaling pathway, serotonergic synapse and ferroptosis. A total of 29 significant gene set pathways of LC data were performed by GSEA analysis. The GSVA analysis obtained 53 significant differential gene set pathways. The top 20 genes were identified by PPI. ROC curves revealed four of the top20 genes had a good performance, which were CA9 (AUC = 0.930), MAPK3 (AUC = 0.915), MUC1 (AUC = 0.945), and NOX4 (AUC = 0.933). Subsequent analysis found that CDKN2A has the highest mutation frequency in the top 20 gene, and IFNG had a significant correlation with age, tumor stage, degree of tumor differentiation and lymphatic clearance surgery.

Conclusion

Our study identified key genes closely related to ferroptosis in LC, which still need more studies to explore the mechanisms involved and may become effective clinical diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers.

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Funding

The study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 81903983); China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2019M651122).

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Author notes

  1. Zao Ji and Zhiyao Fang contributed equally to this work and share first authorship.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Otolaryngology, The First Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang, 110001, Liaoning, China

    Zao Ji & Aihui Yan

  2. Department of Critical Care Medicine, The First Affiliated Hospital of Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116021, China

    Zhiyao Fang, Xue Dong, Jia Wang & Xianyao Wan

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  1. Zao Ji
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  4. Jia Wang
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Contributions

ZJ and ZF design, analysis and interpretation of data. ZJ, ZF and XD statistical analysis; ZF and JW drafting of the manuscript. JW, XW and AY critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content, administrative support, obtaining funding, supervision. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

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Correspondence to Jia Wang, Xianyao Wan or Aihui Yan.

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Ethics approval and patient written informed consent were not required because all analyses in our study were mainly performed based on data from a common database.

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Ji, Z., Fang, Z., Dong, X. et al. Potential ferroptosis-related diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers in laryngeal cancer. Eur Arch Otorhinolaryngol 279, 5277–5288 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00405-022-07433-4

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