Solute carrier family 2 members (SLC2A) as potential targets for the treatment of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma patients

Objective

Solute carrier family 2 (SLC2A) members have drawn interest in cancer research due to their crucial function in glucose metabolism. To understand their role in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma (HNSCC), we have comprehensively analyzed the gene expression of SLC2A family members in HNSCC patients.

Method

RNAseq data of 520 HNSCC patients and 46 normals was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and analyzed using various statistical methods in R.

Result

Comparison of gene expression between normal and tumor samples showed significantly higher expression of SLC2A1, 4, 6, and 9 in tumor samples compared to normal. Further analysis revealed that both HPV(−)ve and HPV(+)ve samples showed significantly higher expression of SLC2A1 as compared to normal, though the difference was more pronounced in the case of HPV(−)ve. In contrast, SLC2A9 showed a highly significant difference between HPV(−)ve and normal but not between HPV(+)ve and normal. Furthermore, SLC2A genes showed significant variation among the basal (BA), classical (CL), and mesenchymal (MS) expression groups of HNSCC patients. SLC2A1 and 9 were significantly overexpressed in the BA group as compared to the other two groups, suggesting that these two genes can be utilized for the targeted therapy of HPV(−)ve HNSCC patients of the BA group.

Conclusion

Our results suggest that the biology of SLC2A family members is complex and, they may be playing different roles in different genomic backgrounds. More studies on SLC2A family members are needed to utilize them for targeted therapy or as diagnostic biomarkers.