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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 21|pp 24050—24070

Identification of KIF4A as a prognostic biomarker for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Lingwei Wang1,2, Gang Liu2, Enkhbat Bolor-Erdene4, Qinchuan Li2, Yunqing Mei3,4, Lei Zhou3
  • 1Affiliated Zhongshan Hospital of Dalian University, Dalian 116001, China
  • 2East Hospital of Tongji University School of Medicine, Shanghai 200120, China
  • 3Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Xiangyang No. 1 People’s Hospital, Hubei University of Medicine, Xiangyang 441000, China
  • 4Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery, Tongji Hospital, School of Medicine, Tongji University, Shanghai 200065, China
* Equal contribution
Received: May 11, 2021Accepted: September 3, 2021Published: November 14, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.203585

Copyright: © 2021 Wang 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

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is the most common and aggressive tumor worldwide, and the long-term survival of these patients remains poor. Three databases (GSE17351, GSE20347, and GSE100942) were obtained from Gene Expression Omnibus, and 193 differentially expressed genes including 56 upregulated and 137 downregulated genes were identified by paired test using limma R package. Then, functional enrichments by gene ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses showed these genes were mainly related protein digestion and absorption, and IL-17 signaling pathway. We then constructed a protein-protein interaction network and cytoHubba module to determine the six hub genes and overall survival analysis of the six hub genes were evaluated by UALCAN and GEPIA2 analysis. Ultimately, the experimental results confirmed the KIF4A was overexpressed in the ESCC tissues and cell lines compared with the normal esophageal mucosal tissues and was linked to poor prognosis. Moreover, we also revealed that KIF4A facilitates proliferation, cell cycle, migration, and invasion of ESCC in vivo and in vitro. Overall, these findings demonstrated that KIF4A could serve as diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and may help facilitate therapeutic targets in ESCC patients.