Identification of a potential target for treatment of squamous cell carcinoma of the tongue: follistatin

Abstract Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the tongue is the most common oral cancer and is prone to develop regional lymph nodes and distant metastases. Reliable and stable therapeutic targets can improve the curative effect and reduce toxic side effects caused by traditional treatments such as surgery, radiotherapy, and chemotherapy. We have analysed three sets of series of functional gene expression of SCC of the tongue from gene expression omnibus (GEO) datasets, and 154 common differentially expressed genes (DEG) between SCC of the tongue and the corresponding normal tissues were screened. Further bioinformatics research that was based on the data from the Cancer genome atlas, Gene ontology, and the Kyoto encyclopaedia of genes and genomes indicated that the increased expression of follistatin might be correlated with a poor prognosis in these patients. By assay of colony formation, reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), western blotting, immunohistochemical staining, and lentivirus transfection, we confirmed that downregulation of follistatin inhibited the proliferation of SCC cells in the tongue.