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Updated: Jan 12, 2026
In Vivo CRISPR/Cas9 Screening to Simultaneously Evaluate Gene Function in Mouse Skin and Oral Cavity
Published on: November 2, 2020
Common Gene and Immune Cell Dynamics Across Oral Carcinogenesis: A Multi-Stage Transcriptomic Analysis
Zixuan Liao1, Xiaofei Li2, Qingchen Ma2
1Department of Stomatology, Jinling Hospital, Affiliated Hospital of Medical School, Nanjing University, Nanjing, China.
Background:
The progressive process from normal oral tissue (ONT) to precancerous lesions (oral dysplasia [OD], leukoplakia-oral precancerous lesion [OPL]) and ultimately to oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) involves dynamic molecular and immunological alterations.
Methods:
Four transcriptomic datasets were analyzed using GEO2R and the R package "IOBR" for differentially expressed genes (DEGs) and immune infiltration profiling. Two-sample Mendelian randomization (TSMR) was employed to validate the causal effects of immune cells and genes on 11 oral-related cohorts.
Results:
WDR66 was the only consistently upregulated DEG across all stages (ONT, OD, OPL, OSCC; p < 0.001), with expression levels increasing from premalignant to malignant tissues. Immune infiltration indicates that neutrophils and CD4+ effector memory T cells (Tem) show high correlation with OSCC and OD (these 2 cells were intersection cells in OSCC based on 3 cohorts, high correlation cells in OD based on 1 cohort). TSMR indicated that WDR66: OR M (Q1, Q3) = 0.8513 (0.8453, 0.8759), p, M (Q1, Q3) = 0.0057 (0.0029, 0.0104); CD4+ T cells: OR M (Q1, Q3) = 0.5888 (0.4556, 0.7254), p, M (Q1, Q3) = 0.0000 (0.0000, 0.0002).
Conclusions:
WDR66 emerges with its expression tightly coupled to CD4+ T cell dysfunction in OSCC.
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