Identifying candidate diagnostic markers for early stage of non-small cell lung cancer

PLoS One. 2019 Nov 14;14(11):e0225080. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0225080. eCollection 2019.

Abstract

We performed a series of bioinformatics analysis on a set of important gene expression data with 76 samples in early stage of non-small cell lung cancer, including 40 adenocarcinoma samples, 16 squamous cell carcinoma samples and 20 normal samples. In order to identify the specific markers for diagnosis, we compared the two subtypes with the normal samples respectively to determine the gene expression characteristics. Through the multi-dimensional scaling classification, we found that the samples were clustered well according to the disease cases. Based on the classification results and using empirical Bayes moderation and treat method, 486 important genes associated with the disease were identified. We constructed gene functions and gene pathways to verify our result and explain the pathogenicity factor and process. We generated a protein-protein interaction network based on the mutual interaction between the selected genes and found that the top thirteen hub genes were highly associated with lung cancer or some other cancers including five newly found genes through our method. The results of this study indicated that contrast on the gene expression between different subtypes and normal samples provides important information for the detection of non-small cell lung cancer and helps exploration of the disease pathogenesis.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bayes Theorem
  • Biomarkers, Tumor / metabolism*
  • Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung / metabolism*
  • Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung / pathology*
  • Cell Line, Tumor
  • Cluster Analysis
  • Down-Regulation / genetics
  • Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic
  • Gene Ontology
  • Gene Regulatory Networks
  • Humans
  • Lung Neoplasms / metabolism*
  • Lung Neoplasms / pathology*
  • Neoplasm Staging
  • Protein Interaction Maps
  • Up-Regulation / genetics

Substances

  • Biomarkers, Tumor

Grants and funding

Xu Zhang has received the award No.11701471 from the National Science Foundation of China (http://www.nsfc.gov.cn/) and cstc2017jcyjAX0476 from Basic Science and Frontier Technology Research Project of Chongqing (http://kjj.cq.gov.cn). The funders did not play a role in this study.