Abstract
With high mortality and poor prognosis, hepatocellular carcinoma (LIHC) has become the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. Most of the LIHC patients missed the best treatment period because of the untimely diagnosis. For others, even if they are temporarily cured, they have to face a very low prognostic survival rate and a very high risk of recurrence. Based on the characteristics of abnormal proliferation and uncontrolled growth of tumor cells. Cell Division Cycle Associated (CDCA) family genes, which are responsible for regulating the cell cycle and proliferation, were selected as our research object to explore the mechanism of hepatocarcinogenesis. To this end, we investigated the expression profiles of CDCA family genes in LIHC and corresponding normal tissues, and the effect of CDCAs expression on the survival of prognosis and immune cell infiltration through bioinformatics analysis methods and the publicly accessible online databases. In addition, we also analyzed the expression correlation of CDCAs and screened the neighboring genes related to functional CDCAs. The results revealed that the expression levels of CDCA1/3/5/8 were significantly increased in LIHC, regardless of stage, sex, race, drinking behavior, and other clinical factors. CDCAs expression was significantly correlated with poor prognosis and was positively correlated with the infiltration of dendritic cells, B cells, and macrophages. We also found that the most relevant neighboring genes to CDCAs in LIHC were SGO2, NDC80, BIRC5, INCENP, and PLOD1. In general, our work suggests that CDCA1/3/5/8 has the potential to be a diagnostic gene in hepatocarcinogenesis and prognostic biomarkers for LIHC patients.
Highlights
Liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with an estimated incidence rate of over one million cases per year, which seriously endangers human health (Bray et al, 2018; Llovet et al, 2018)
To reveal the mechanism of LIHC tumorigenesis and to identify diagnostic and prognostic markers or therapeutic targets for LIHC patients, in the current study, the transcriptional levels of Cell Division Cycle Associated (CDCA) genes were investigated by Oncomine and GEPIA, and we found that CDCA1/3/5/8 expression levels were significantly increased in LIHC
For LIHC, in particular, we found consistent results in both the Oncomine and GEPIA databases, i.e., the expression of CDCA1, CDCA3, CDCA5, and CDCA8 in LIHC was significantly higher than those in normal tissues (Figures 1, 2A)
Summary
Liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide, with an estimated incidence rate of over one million cases per year, which seriously endangers human health (Bray et al, 2018; Llovet et al, 2018). The rising incidence of LIHC is due to a high rate of alcohol consumption and the occurrence of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (Schütte et al, 2009; Gish et al, 2016). The development of various treatment technologies, including surgical resection, liver transplantation surgery, interventional therapy, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, may reduce mortality to some extent, LIHC patients still bear a poor five-year survival rate of only 20–30% (Pang et al, 2008; Yang et al, 2009). There is an urgent need to deepen the understanding of LIHC tumorigenesis and develop new treatment and monitoring methods for early detection and prolong the survival of LIHC patients
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