Implications of ZNF334 gene in lymph node metastasis of lung SCC: potential bypassing of cellular senescence

The primary goal of this work is to identify biomarkers associated with lung squamous cell carcinoma and assess their potential for early detection of lymph node metastasis. This study investigated gene expression in lymph node metastasis of lung squamous cell carcinoma using data from the Cancer Genome Atlas and R software. Protein-protein interaction networks, hub genes, and enriched pathways were analyzed. ZNF334 and TINAGL1, two less explored genes, were further examined through in vitro, ex vivo, and in vivo experiments to validate the findings from bioinformatics analyses. The role of ZNF334 and TINAGL1 in senescence induction was assessed after H2O2 and UV induced senescence phenotype determined using β-galactosidase activity and cell cycle status assay. We identified a total of 611 up- and 339 down-regulated lung squamous cell carcinoma lymph node metastasis-associated genes (FDR