USP54 regulates the malignancy and autophagy in nasopharyngeal cancer cells by modulating ULK1 ubiquitination levels
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is an aggressive malignancy with poor outcomes at advanced stages. Although ubiquitination is critical in regulating oncogenic pathways, the role of many ubiquitin-specific proteases (USPs) in NPC remains unexplored. In this study, we conducted a systematic screen of USPs to identify regulators of ULK1, a key initiator of autophagy and oncogene in NPC. We identified USP54 as a potent stabilizer of ULK1. Bioinformatic analyses of NPC transcriptomic datasets revealed that both ULK1 and USP54 are significantly overexpressed in NPC tissues. Functional assays demonstrated that USP54 overexpression enhanced NPC cell viability, colony formation, migration, and invasion by promoting autophagy, independently of PI3K/AKT pathway activity. Importantly, pharmacological inhibition of autophagy or genetic silencing of ULK1 abolished the oncogenic effects of USP54, indicating that ULK1-dependent autophagy mediates USP54-driven NPC progression. Our findings revealed that USP54 may promote autophagy and malignancy in NPC via regulating ULK1 stability, highlighting USP54 as a potential therapeutic target for NPC treatment.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".