A microarray-based transcriptomic analysis of oral squamous cell carcinoma cell lines with differing responses to cisplatin

Cisplatin is a commonly used platinum-based chemotherapeutic agent for oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC). However, cisplatin efficacy is limited by drug toxicity and the resistance capabilities of cancer cells. Reduced efficacy of anticancer therapy has been recently attributed to the presence of therapy-insensitive subpopulations in heterogeneous tumours, known as cancer stem-like cells (CSCs). CSCs comprise a tumour-forming subpopulation of cells that exhibit stem cell-like features, including the abilities to self-renew and turn into progenitor and differentiated cancer cell lineages, and enhanced therapeutic resistance capabilities, thus driving the continual growth and survival of tumours. Overall, this work was conducted to provide the transcriptomes of the OSCC cell lines with differing responses to cisplatin using a microarray analysis. The data may be analyzed alongside other similar datasets to explore the underlying cisplatin resistance mechanisms in OSCC. Two human OSCC cell lines with different tumour staging, namely H103 and SAS, and an in vitro drug-resistant model derived from the CSCs of SAS cell line were used in this study. The CSCs from SAS cell line were generated via a sphere-forming assay, resulting in SAS tumour spheres with stem cell-like features. Cisplatin sensitivity was determined by measurements of cell viability after 72 h treatments with cisplatin using CellTiter 96 AQueous Non-Radioactive Cell Proliferation Assay (MTS assay; Promega Inc., USA). Briefly, H103 and SAS tumour spheres had reduced sensitivity towards cisplatin, yielding higher IC50 values of cisplatin compared to SAS. Three biological replicates per cell were prepared, with each replicate representing a different passage of the cells. The whole transcriptomic profiles of the cells were obtained from a microarray analysis using the Affymetrix GeneChip Human Clariom S Array (Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., USA).