Zhou Z, Tang J, Lu Y, Jia J, Luo T, Su K, Dai X, Zhang H, Liu O. Prognosis-related molecular subtyping in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients based on glycolytic/cholesterogenic gene data.
Cancer Cell Int 2023;
23:37. [PMID:
36841765 PMCID:
PMC9960414 DOI:
10.1186/s12935-023-02880-3]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/29/2022] [Accepted: 02/19/2023] [Indexed: 02/27/2023] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains an unmet medical challenge. Metabolic reprogramming is a hallmark of diverse cancers, including HNSCC.
METHODS
We investigated the metabolic profile in HNSCC by using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (n = 481) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) (n = 97) databases. The metabolic stratification of HNSCC samples was identified by using unsupervised k-means clustering. We analyzed the correlations of the metabolic subtypes in HNSCC with featured genomic alterations and known HNSCC subtypes. We further validated the metabolism-related subtypes based on features of ENO1, PFKFB3, NSDHL and SQLE expression in HNSCC by Immunohistochemistry. In addition, genomic characteristics of tumor metabolism that varied among different cancer types were confirmed.
RESULTS
Based on the median expression of coexpressed cholesterogenic and glycolytic genes, HNSCC subtypes were identified, including glycolytic, cholesterogenic, quiescent and mixed subtypes. The quiescent subtype was associated with the longest survival and was distributed in stage I and G1 HNSCC. Mutation analysis of HNSCC genes indicated that TP53 has the highest mutation frequency. The CDKN2A mutation frequency has the most significant differences amongst these four subtypes. There is good overlap between our metabolic subtypes and the HNSCC subtype.
CONCLUSION
The four metabolic subtypes were successfully determined in HNSCC. Compared to the quiescent subtype, glycolytic, cholesterogenic and mixed subtypes had significantly worse outcome, which might offer guidelines for developing a novel treatment strategy for HNSCC.
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