Identification of RTP4 facilitating ovarian cancer by bioinformatics analysis and experimental validation

Ovarian cancer (OV) is the most malignant gynecological tumor in women, with poor prognosis and high mortality rate. This study aims to identify hub genes in OV and explore the role of Receptor transporter 4 (RTP4) in OV progression. Common differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened from two microarray datasets. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis were performed. Protein-protein interaction (PPI) network was constructed by STING. Kaplan-Meier plotter was used to analyze prognosis. The effect of target gene on immune infiltration was analyzed by TIMER. The proliferation, migration, and invasion of OV cells were measured by CCK-8, wound healing assay, and trans-well assay, respectively. A total of 293 common DEGs were selected from GSE12470 and GSE16709 datasets. Hub genes, EPCAM, KIFC1, RTP4, TAGLN, and ZFP36 were selected by PPI network. Kaplan-Meier plotter demonstrated that high expression of RTP4 was related to low overall survival in OV patients. The TIMER result showed that high expression of RTP4 promoted immune infiltration of CD8⁺ T cells, B cells, neutrophils, and dendritic cells in OV. Moreover, silencing RTP4 significantly inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OV cells. RTP4 was associated with the poor prognosis in OV. In summary, silencing RTP4 inhibited the proliferation, migration, and invasion of OV cells, having the potential to be a novel therapeutic target for OV.