Department of Cellular and Molecular Pathology, Stefan S. Nicolau Institute of Virology, 030304 Bucharest, Romania.
Faculty of Medicine, Titu Maiorescu University, 040441 Bucharest, Romania.
Int J Mol Sci. 2022 Mar 16;23(6):3214. doi: 10.3390/ijms23063214.
Gastric cancer has remained in the top five cancers for over ten years, both in terms of incidence and mortality due to the shortage of biomarkers for disease follow-up and effective therapies. Aiming to fill this gap, we performed a bioinformatics assessment on our data and two additional GEO microarray profiles, followed by a deep analysis of the 40 differentially expressed genes identified. PPI network analysis and MCODE plug-in pointed out nine upregulated hub genes coding for proteins from the collagen family (COL12A1, COL5A2, and COL10A1) or involved in the assembly (BGN) or degradation of collagens (CTHRC1), and also associated with cell adhesion (THBS2 and SPP1) and extracellular matrix degradation (FAP, SULF1). Those genes were highly upregulated at the mRNA and protein level, the increase being correlated with pathological T stages. The high expression of BGN ( = 8 × 10), THBS2 ( = 1.2 × 10), CTHRC1 ( = 1.1 × 10), SULF1 ( = 3.8 × 10), COL5A1 ( = 1.3 × 10), COL10A1 ( = 5.7 × 10), COL12A1 ( = 2 × 10) correlated with poor overall survival and an immune infiltrate based especially on immunosuppressive M2 macrophages (-value range 4.82 × 10-1.63 × 10). Our results emphasize that these genes could be candidate biomarkers for GC progression and prognosis and new therapeutic targets.
胃癌在发病率和死亡率方面一直位居前五名癌症之列,这是由于缺乏疾病监测和有效治疗的生物标志物所致。为了填补这一空白,我们对自己的数据以及另外两个 GEO 微阵列图谱进行了生物信息学评估,随后对鉴定出的 40 个差异表达基因进行了深入分析。PPI 网络分析和 MCODE 插件指出了九个上调的枢纽基因,这些基因编码胶原蛋白家族的蛋白(COL12A1、COL5A2 和 COL10A1)或参与胶原蛋白的组装(BGN)或降解(CTHRC1),也与细胞黏附(THBS2 和 SPP1)和细胞外基质降解(FAP、SULF1)有关。这些基因在 mRNA 和蛋白质水平上均高度上调,其增加与病理 T 分期相关。BGN(=8×10)、THBS2(=1.2×10)、CTHRC1(=1.1×10)、SULF1(=3.8×10)、COL5A1(=1.3×10)、COL10A1(=5.7×10)、COL12A1(=2×10)的高表达与整体生存不良以及基于免疫抑制性 M2 巨噬细胞的免疫浸润相关(-值范围为 4.82×10-1.63×10)。我们的结果强调,这些基因可能是 GC 进展和预后的候选生物标志物,也是新的治疗靶点。