Identification of novel enriched recurrent chimeric COL7A1-UCN2 in human laryngeal cancer samples using deep sequencing

Abstract Background As hybrid RNAs, transcription-induced chimeras (TICs) may have tumor-promoting properties, and some specific chimeras have become important diagnostic markers and therapeutic targets for cancer. Methods We examined 23 paired laryngeal cancer (LC) tissues and adjacent normal mucous membrane tissue samples (ANMMTs). Three of these pairs were used for comparative transcriptomic analysis using high-throughput sequencing. Furthermore, we used real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) for further validation in 20 samples. The Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression model were used for the survival analysis. Results We identified 87 tumor-related TICs and found that COL7A1-UCN2 had the highest frequency in LC tissues (13/23; 56.5%), whereas none of the ANMMTs were positive (0/23; p