Medical Sciences
Transcriptomic Profiling Reveals METTL26 as a Potential Biomarker in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma with Independent Validation in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma
By Rossella Rotondo, Alessandro Polizzi, Sabrina Donati Zeppa and 3 others.
Abstract
Background
Methyltransferase-like 26 (METTL26) is a poorly characterized member of the METTL family that has been included in previous pan-cancer analyses, but its disease-specific clinical and molecular relevance in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) and oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) remains poorly defined. The aim of this study was to investigate METTL26 expression and its potential clinical and biological relevance in HNSCC, with particular attention to OSCC.
Methods
The TCGA-HNSC dataset was used as a discovery dataset. METTL26 expression and pathological stage were evaluated using GEPIA3, whereas survival associations were analyzed in R. Tumor microenvironment associations were investigated using TIMER3. Genes co-expressed with METTL26 were subjected to Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) enrichment analyses, while protein interaction networks were explored using STRING. These discovery analyses were performed using the heterogeneous TCGA-HNSC cohort, whereas two independent OSCC cohorts (GSE37991 and GSE30784) were primarily used to validate differential expression.