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Research Paper|Volume 11, Issue 22|pp 10074—10099

Characterization of long non-coding RNA and messenger RNA profiles in laryngeal cancer by weighted gene co-expression network analysis

Huanhuan Liu1,3, Yi Sun2,3, Huan Tian2,3, Xiaolian Xiao1, Jiaqi Zhang1, Yongzhen Wang1, Fengyan Yu2,3
  • 1Department of Plastic Surgery, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
  • 2Department of Breast Surgery, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
  • 3Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Malignant Tumor Epigenetics and Gene Regulation, Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China
Received: July 27, 2019Accepted: October 28, 2019Published: November 18, 2019
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.102419

Copyright © 2019 Liu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Laryngeal cancer (LC) is a malignant tumor in the head and neck region. It was recently elucidated that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) participate in the pathogenesis of LC. However, the detailed mechanism of lncRNA in LC and whether long non-coding RNAs serve as effective biomarkers remains unclear. Ribonucleic acid (RNA) sequence data of LC and 11 patient clinical traits were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and analyzed by weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). A total of 9 co-expression modules were identified. The co-expression Pink module significantly correlated with four clinical traits, including history of smoking, lymph node count, tumor status, and the success of follow-up treatment. Based on the co-expression Pink module, lncRNA-microRNA (miRNA)-messenger RNA (mRNA) and lncRNA-RNA binding protein-mRNA networks were constructed. We found that 8 lncRNAs significantly impacted overall survival (OS) in LC patients. These identified lncRNA and hub gene biomarkers were also validated in multiple LC cells in vitro via qPCR. Taken together, this study provided the framework of co-expression gene modules of LC and identified some important biomarkers in LC development and disease progression.