KAZN As a Diagnostic Marker in Ovarian Cancer: A Comprehensive Analysis Based on Microarray, MRNA-Sequencing, and Methylation Data
Abstract Background: Previous studies have shown that KAZN is involved in multiple biological processes such as cell development, proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis. Most of the studies related to KAZN have been carried out in keratinocytes. Apart from that, KAZN is also expressed in other tissues, such as the ovary. However, the related research is relatively few and the function in other tissue or cell is still not clear. Methods: We investigated the correlations between KAZN expression and clinical characteristics of ovarian cancer (OC) and compared methylation levels of normal and OC samples through data collected from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) microarrays, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium (CPTAC). The relationships among differentially methylated sites in the KAZN gene, corresponding KAZN mRNA expression levels and prognosis were further analyzed.Results: KAZN was up-regulated in ovarian epithelial tumors and the expression of KAZN was correlated with the patients’ survival time. KAZN CpG site cg17657618 was positively correlated to the expression of mRNA and the methylation levels are significantly differential between the group of the stage of “I and II” the group of the stage “III and IV”. This study also presents a method to classify tumor and normal tissue in OC using DNA methylation pattern in the KAZN gene body region. Conclusions: We validated that KAZN was involved in ovarian cancer progression. These results may provide a new direction for ovarian cancer research and provide a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target.