Association Between Mitochondrial DNA Copy Number and Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma: A Systematic Review and Dose-Response Meta-Analysis

Plasma cell-free circRNAs panel act as fingerprint predicts the occurrence of laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma

Background: Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have recently emerged as a new class of RNAs, highly enriched in the human tissues and very stable within cells, exosomes and body fluids. In this study, we aimed to screen the plasma cell-free derived circRNAs in laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma (LSCC) and investigate whether these circRNAs could predicted LSCC as potential biomarkers.

Methods: The circRNA microarray was employed with three samples in each group to screen the dysregulated circRNAs isolated from plasma samples. The top 20 circRNAs were first selected as candidates with the upregulated level in the plasma of LSCC.

Results: Further validation found that only circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 was consistent with training set. The ROC curve also revealed a high diagnostic ability an area under ROC curve value (AUC) for single circRNA and combined. The AUC for circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 and the combined was 0.933, 0.908, 0.965 and 0.990 in training set. For the validation set, the AUC was 0.766, 0.864, 0.908 and 0.951. The three circRNAs were further investigated with stable expression in human plasma samples.

Conclusions: The plasma derived circ_0019201, circ_0011773 and circ_0122790 might be the potential biomarker for predicting the LSCC.

The circ_0032822 Promotes the Proliferation of Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma Cells Through miR-141/EF3 Signaling Axis

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) refers to an epithelial malignant tumor that originates in the head and neck, and over 600,000 new cases are reported every year, However, the overall prognosis is still poor due to local recurrence and distant metastasis after surgery. The circ_0032822 has been reported upregulated in human oral squamous cell carcinoma; however, the detailed function or mechanism remains unknown. In this study, we confirmed the upregulation of circ_0032822 in HNSCC tumor tissues. Functionally, the overexpression of circ_0032822 significantly promoted the proliferation of HNSCC cell lines along with the S phase arrest and reduced apoptosis, while downregulation of circ_0032822 has the opposite effect in vitro. Mechanistic analysis showed that circ_0032822 acted as a competing endogenous RNA of miR-141 to diminish the repressive effect of miR-141 on its target E2F3. In conclusion, we demonstrated that circ_0032822 functions as a tumor oncogene in HNSCC and that its function is regulated via the miR-141/E2F3 axis.