Abstract
Background: Osteosarcoma, primarily resulting from mesenchymal cell differentiation, is the most common primary malignancy of the bone in children and adolescents. Metastases to other sites, such as the lung, often occur in the early stages and progress rapidly. Autophagy functions as a tumor-suppressing mechanism in the early stages of oncogenesis, however, in later stages, autophagy may promote tumor growth, spread, and increase treatment resistance. Methods: In the present study, we aimed to screen new key autophagy-related biomarkers that may serve as therapeutic targets for osteosarcoma. The expression profile of the GSE42352 dataset, including 103 OS cell lines and 15 MSC lines from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), was analyzed to identify the differentially expressed genes. Results: WGCNA was used to construct the gene co-expression network in osteosarcoma, identify co-expression modules for protein interactions (PPI), and screen the key genes. A total of 757 differentially expressed genes were identified by WGCNA analysis including one key autophagy-related module. Conclusions: Further, we performed the PPI analysis for module genes and identified a key gene. We also theoretically and functionally validated its expression using the validation dataset GSE14359, and in vitro experiments, respectively.