Decreased calpain 6 expression is associated with tumorigenesis and poor prognosis in HNSCC.

Calpains are a family of intracellular cysteine proteases involved in various biological processes. Previously, the family was identified to have abnormal expression in several types of malignant tumor. Calpain 6 was less well known; however, it was recently identified to be involved in the carcinogenesis of certain types of malignant tumor. However, the expression of calpain 6 in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains unclear. A total of six datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) was analyzed and an association between calpain 6 expression levels and HNSCC was identified, with the expression of calpain 6 observed to be significantly decreased in HNSCC (P<0.01). However, the expression of calpain 6 may vary between distinct tumor stages of HNSCC. Furthermore, calpain 6 expression was positively associated with the survival rate in patients with HNSCC (P<0.05), with increased expression of calpain 6 associated with an improved survival outcome. Calpain 6 expression was analyzed using an HNSCC tissue microarray and these results were consistent with the statistical analysis of the bioinformatics data from the GEO, indicating that calpain 6 may be a tumor suppressor protein in HNSCC.

Citation

Yinzhou Xiang, Fen Li, Lei Wang, Anyuan Zheng, Jingjing Zuo, Man Li, Yongping Wang, Yong Xu, Chen Chen, Shiming Chen, Bokui Xiao, Zezhang Tao. Decreased calpain 6 expression is associated with tumorigenesis and poor prognosis in HNSCC. Oncology letters. 2017 Apr;13(4):2237-2243

PMID: 28454386

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