Bioinformatics Analysis Identifies Precision Treatment with Paclitaxel for Hepatocellular Carcinoma Patients Harboring Mutant or Wild-Type Gene.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is an aggressive and chemoresistant cancer type. The development of novel therapeutic strategies is still urgently needed. Personalized or precision medicine is a new trend in cancer therapy, which treats cancer patients with specific genetic alterations. In this study, a gene signature was identified from the transcriptome of HCC patients, which was correlated with the patients' poorer prognoses. This gene signature is functionally related to mitotic cell cycle regulation, and its higher or lower expression is linked to the mutation in tumor protein p53 () or catenin beta 1 (), respectively. Gene-drug association analysis indicated that the taxanes, such as the clinically approved anticancer drug paclitaxel, are potential drugs targeting this mitotic gene signature. Accordingly, HCC cell lines harboring mutant or wild-type genes are more sensitive to paclitaxel treatment. Therefore, our results imply that HCC patients with mutant or wild-type genes may benefit from the paclitaxel therapy.