Investigating the Role of Differentially Expressed Genes and Sex-Specific Genes in Lung Adenocarcinoma: A Transcriptomic Analysis

Abstract

Lung cancer is a life-threatening disease that affects hundreds of thousands of patients every year. While conventional medicine offers effective treatments for lung cancer, the use of targeted therapy can offer patients a more favorable treatment by being as effective and by minimizing the side effects the patient experiences. The purpose of this research is to identify any differentially expressed or sex-specific genes in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) that can act as potential targets for treatment. Using transcriptomic profiles of LUAD tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas, these profiles are analyzed using the TCGABiolinks library on R. The differentially expressed genes are then used to generate gene ontology, create protein association networks, and identify survival plots of genes using Metascape, STRING, and the Human Protein Atlas respectively. Similar procedures were used for the sex-specific analysis. The gene ontology analysis showed that the TFAP2 family of transcription factors and the PID HNF3B pathway likely promote tumorigenesis in LUAD. Moreover, AGER and SFTPC, genes involved in lung development, were underexpressed in all LUAD samples. Patients with a higher expression of these genes had a higher survival rate than others and can act as potential prognostic markers. In sex-specific genes, it was found that members of the MAGE-A family, a testis antigen family, were highly up-regulated in both males and females. The dysregulation of these genes in females might have a specific role in LUAD progression. These findings can be investigated further to develop better therapies to treat the disease.