β-1,4-N-乙酰半乳糖胺基转移酶4在头颈部鳞状细胞癌中的表达规律及功能初探OA

Objective To screen differentially expressed genes in metastatic and non-metastatic head and neck squa-mous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) tissues using bioinformatics technology analysis,and to predict potential key genes.Methods Related data from 19 cases of metastatic HNSCC and 48 cases of non-metastatic HNSCC with clear infor-mation were obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas dataset. The upregulated and downregulated differentially ex-pressed genes in metastatic and non-metastatic HNSCC tissues were screened using bioinformatics technology analy-sis. Subsequent analysis included cluster analysis,Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis,and gene onto-logy analysis. Results indicate that β-1,4-N-acetyl-ga-lactosaminyltransferase (B4GALNT4) was selected as a key gene due to its smallest "adjusted P value." This gene was verified at the cellular level using quantita-tive reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Western Blot. Results Compared with non-metastatic HNSCC tissues,76 genes were significantly downregulat-ed and 99 genes were significantly upregulated in the metastatic HNSCC tissues. Among which,the B4GALNT4 gene expression was found to be the most significantly upregulated. Cellular-level experiments revealed that,compared to UM-2 cells with weak metastasis capability,the mRNA and protein expression levels of B4GALNT4 in UM-1 cells with strong metastasis capability were significantly higher (P<0.05). In addition,the level of protein O-glycosylation in UM-1 cells was also significantly increased in UM-1 cells compared to UM-2 cells (P<0.05). Conclusion B4GALNT4 is upregulated in metastatic HNSCC tissues and cells,and its expression is positively correlated with the level of protein glycosylation. Therefore,B4GALNT4 is a potentially new target for the prevention and treatment of tumor metastasis.