Desmoglein 3 and Keratin 14 for Distinguishing Between Lung Adenocarcinoma and Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) are the leading major histological phenotypes of all non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this study, the candidate genes and the potential tumorigenesis distinguishing between LUAD and LUSC were analyzed.

The present study investigated two microarray datasets (GSE28571 and GSE10245) downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. A protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was applied to screen out the candidate genes. In addition, differently expressed genes (DEGs) between lung adenocarcinoma and lung squamous cell carcinoma of the two datasets were functionally analyzed by Gene Ontology (GO) and the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment. R 4.0.2 was used to perform Kaplan-Meier analysis of DSG3 (desmoglein 3) and KRT14 (keratin 14) by analyzing the expression and clinical data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database.

The results revealed that 47 DEGs of the two datasets were ascertained in our study. It was found that the DEGs were mainly involved in pathways related to p63 transcription factor network and validated transcriptional factor targeting TAp63, etc. Based on the analysis, we finally identified DSG3 and KRT14 as potential biomarkers for distinguishing between LUAD and LUSC. These results suggested that DSG3 and KRT14 could have the potential to play an important role in NSCLC patients, as diagnostic markers. At the same time, DSG3 or KRT14 indicated a worse prognosis in LUSC patients, which were associated with pathways relevant to the TRAIL signaling pathway and TNF receptor signaling pathway according to bioinformatic analysis.

The DSG3 and KRT14 have the potential to be used as diagnostic markers, which presented here may facilitate improvements in distinguishing between LUAD and LUSC in advanced NSCLC patients.