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A Pan-cancer Analysis of the Expression and Clinical Relevance of Small Nucleolar RNAs in Human Cancer

Jing Gong1, Yajuan Li2, Chun-Jie Liu3

  • 1Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, McGovern Medical School at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, Houston, TX 77030, USA; Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Key Laboratory of Environmental Health of Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hubei 430030, PRC.

Cell Reports
|November 16, 2017
PubMed

Insights

Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) are elevated in many cancers and linked to tumor subtypes. SNORD46 promotes cancer cell growth and invasion, highlighting snoRNAs as potential cancer biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

Area of Science:

  • Oncology
  • Molecular Biology
  • Genomics

Background:

  • Small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) are increasingly recognized for their roles in cancer development.
  • Understanding the expression and function of snoRNAs in diverse cancer types is crucial for identifying new therapeutic strategies.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To systematically investigate the expression landscape and clinical relevance of snoRNAs across 31 cancer types using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data.
  • To explore the regulatory mechanisms of snoRNA expression and their association with molecular and clinical cancer subtypes.
  • To identify clinically relevant snoRNAs and experimentally validate their functional roles in cancer progression.

Main Methods:

  • Analysis of >10,000 cancer samples from TCGA for snoRNA expression.
  • Investigation of regulatory factors including host gene expression, copy number variation, and DNA methylation.
  • Unsupervised clustering of snoRNA expression data to identify subtypes.
  • Experimental validation of SNORD46 function in cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion.

Main Results:

  • Elevated expression of snoRNAs and their ribonucleoproteins was observed in multiple cancer types.
  • snoRNA expression is complexly regulated by host genes, copy number variation, and DNA methylation.
  • snoRNA expression subtypes strongly correlated with existing molecular and clinical cancer subtypes.
  • 46 clinically relevant snoRNAs were identified, with SNORD46 experimentally shown to promote cancer cell proliferation, migration, and invasion.

Conclusions:

  • snoRNAs play significant roles in tumorigenesis and cancer progression.
  • snoRNA expression patterns can serve as valuable biomarkers for cancer classification and prognosis.
  • Targeting snoRNAs, such as SNORD46, may offer novel therapeutic strategies for cancer treatment.
  • The developed SNORic data portal provides a valuable resource for the cancer research community.
Keywords:
clinical relevancedata portalpan-cancersmall nucleolar RNAsnoRNA

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