Expression signature and molecular basis of CDH11 in OSCC detected by a combination of multiple methods

Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is one of the most common malignancy in the oral cancer threatening human health and the survival rate of OSCC has not been effectively improved in recent decades, so more effective biomarkers for the targeted therapy of OSCC are needed. Moreover, the role of CDH11 in OSCC has not been intensively investigated. We here show that the CDH11 protein and mRNA expression levels in the OSCC tissues were all significantly higher than in the non-cancerous tissues using RT-qPCR and western blot. This study also revealed that patients with higher CDH11 levels showed a higher incidence of perineural invasion and lymph node metastasis. By using data available from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), and ArrayExpress databases, overexpressed CDH11 in OSCC that associated with patients’history of alcohol, negative Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) status, perineural invasion, infiltration of multiple immune cells, and Single-cell functional states including quiescence and angiogenesis, possessed an excellent discriminatory capability in the OSCC patients. Moreover, the majority of the biological processes or pathways were significantly clustered by co-expressed genes, including extracellular matrix organization, the epithelial to mesenchymal transition, carbon metabolism, and the PI3K-Akt signaling pathway, and the upstream transcriptional regulation mechanism of CDH11 in OSCC was showed on a transcription factor/miRNA-mRNA network with the online tool NetworkAnalyst. Finally, frequent mutation of CDH11 was observed on a mouse OSCC model through whole-genome sequencing. CDH11 might serve as a valuable biomarker in OSCC, as it was identified to be overexpressed in OSCC and related to its clinical progression. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12920-023-01499-7.