Underexpression of SRSF3 and its target gene RBMX predicts good prognosis in patients with head and neck cancer.

Head and neck cancer collectively is one of the most common cancer types in the world. Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is the most common subtype of head and neck cancer. SRSF3 is a proto-oncogene and is overexpressed in patients with OSCC. However, the relationship between SRSF3 expression and the clinical outcomes of patients with head and neck cancer remains unclear. By using the cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics, a public online tool originally developed at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (New York, NY, USA), it was revealed that patients with head and neck cancer with an underexpression of SRSF3 showed better overall and disease-/progression-free survival rates. Moreover, 227 genes were found to be significantly coexpressed with SRSF3 in head and neck cancer. Then, in combination with the analysis of a previous splice-array dataset that included significantly changed genes after the silencing of SRSF3, four potential target genes of SRSF3 were identified. RBMX and HNRNPL were further confirmed to be target genes of SRSF3. Moreover, the underexpression of RBMX was determined to be significantly associated with a favorable overall survival rate among patients, while patients with an underexpression of both SRSF3 and RBMX is a subgroup of individuals with better prognoses than all other patients. These results suggest that the underexpression of SRSF3 and that of its target RBMX can be used as potential biomarkers to predict favorable overall survival among head and neck cancer patients.