Clinical significance of overexpression of metastasis-associated gene MTA1 in cervical cancer and bioinformatic analysis of genes coordinately expressed with MTA1 / 解放军医学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To analyze the clinical significance of MTA1 overexpression in cervical cancer and bioinformatically screen the potential treatment targets from the gene network correlated with MTA1 overexpression. Methods SPSS software package was used to analyze the correlation of MTA1 with clinical metastasis and pathological grade of cervical cancer based on TCGA-CESC data set. The edgeR software was used to screen the gene set whose expression was correlated with MTA1 in cervical cancer at a global transcriptional level. DAVID platform was adopted to identify the enriched biological functions of the gene set significantly correlated with MTA1 expression. The transcriptional regulation network of the gene set was constructed with STRING online platform and Cytospace softwares to identify the key regulators. Results TCGA-CESC database assay showed a significant positive correlation of MTA1 expression with clinical metastasis of cervical cancer (P<0.01). There was a gene set in which gene expression was closely correlated with MTA1 level. Functional enrichment of the gene set indicated that cancer pathways, stem cell pathways, cell migration, cell differentiation, etc. were closely linked to MTA1-correlated malignant behaviors of cancers. Bioinformatical screening showed that Agt, Acta1, Fpr2, Pmch and RGS18, which are correlated with MTA1 expression in cervical cancer, were the key regulators in differentially expressed gene sets. And these genes were located to the GPCR pathway. Conclusions MTA1 overexpression is significantly correlated with clinical metastasis of cervical cancer and paralleled with the activation of gene regulation involved in stem cell pathway, cytokine receptor signaling, cell migration and differentiation pathways. These genes are correlated with MTA1 expression and potential treatment targets in cervical cancer and should be further experimentally evaluated in the future.