Abstract
Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major threat to public health. However, few effective therapeutic strategies exist. We aimed to identify potentially therapeutic target genes of HCC by analyzing three gene expression profiles. Methods: The gene expression profiles were analyzed with GEO2R, an interactive web tool for gene differential expression analysis, to identify common differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Functional enrichment analyses were then conducted followed by a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network construction with the common DEGs. The PPI network was employed to identify hub genes, and the expression level of the hub genes was validated via data mining the Oncomine database. Survival analysis was carried out to assess the prognosis of hub genes in HCC patients. Results: A total of 51 common up-regulated DEGs and 201 down-regulated DEGs were obtained after gene differential expression analysis of the profiles. Functional enrichment analyses indicated that these common DEGs are linked to a series of cancer events. We finally identified 10 hub genes, six of which (OIP5, ASPM, NUSAP1, UBE2C, CCNA2, and KIF20A) are reported as novel HCC hub genes. Data mining the Oncomine database validated that the hub genes have a significant high level of expression in HCC samples compared normal samples (t-test, p < 0.05). Survival analysis indicated that overexpression of the hub genes is associated with a significant reduction (p < 0.05) in survival time in HCC patients. Conclusions: We identified six novel HCC hub genes that might be therapeutic targets for the development of drugs for some HCC patients.
Highlights
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a major threat to public health, is the fifth most common cancer worldwide, causes about one million deaths each year [1,2]
HCC can be managed by the following main treatments: liver transplantation or resection [4], transcatheter arterial chemoembolization (TACE) [5], radiofrequency ablation (RFA) [6], transarterial radioembolization (TARE) [7], and targeted systemic chemotherapy [8]
The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by comparing HCC samples with normal liver samples
Summary
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), a major threat to public health, is the fifth most common cancer worldwide, causes about one million deaths each year [1,2]. Despite the numerous efforts to treat of HCC, the five-year recurrence rate remains high (~60%) after surgical treatment [10]. The need is urgent to develop more effective treatments that can improve the long-term survival rate of HCC patients. We aimed to identify potentially therapeutic target genes of HCC by analyzing three gene expression profiles. Methods: The gene expression profiles were analyzed with GEO2R, an interactive web tool for gene differential expression analysis, to identify common differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Results: A total of 51 common up-regulated DEGs and
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