Identification of Biomarkers and Functional Modules from Genomic Data in Stage-wise Breast Cancer

Title:Identification of Biomarkers and Functional Modules from Genomic Data in Stage-wise Breast Cancer

Volume: 16 Issue: 5

Author(s): Athira Kanathezath*, Vrinda Chembra, Sunil Kumar Padingare Variyath and Gopakumar Gopalakrishnan Nair

Affiliation:

• Computer Science and Engineering, National Institute of Technology, Calicut, Kerala,India

Keywords: Breast cancer, differential gene expression, multiplex network, biomarker, functional modules, gene co-expression network.

Abstract:

Background: Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women across the world, with high incidence and mortality rates. Being a heterogeneous disease, gene expression profiling based analysis plays a significant role in understanding breast cancer. Since expression patterns of patients belonging to the same stage of breast cancer vary considerably, an integrated stage-wise analysis involving multiple samples is expected to give more comprehensive results and understanding of breast cancer.

Objective: The objective of this study is to detect functionally significant modules from gene coexpression network of cancerous tissues and to extract prognostic genes related to multiple stages of breast cancer.

Methods: To achieve this, a multiplex framework is modelled to map the multiple stages of breast cancer, which is followed by a modularity optimization method to identify functional modules from it. These functional modules are found to enrich many Gene Ontology terms significantly that are associated with cancer.

Results and Discussion: Predictive biomarkers are identified based on differential expression analysis of multiple stages of breast cancer.

Conclusion: Our analysis identified 13 stage-I specific genes, 12 stage-II specific genes, and 42 stage- III specific genes that are significantly regulated and could be promising targets of breast cancer therapy. That apart, we could identify 29, 18 and 26 lncRNAs specific to stage I, stage II and stage III, respectively.

Cite this article as:

Kanathezath Athira *, Chembra Vrinda , Padingare Variyath Kumar Sunil and Nair Gopalakrishnan Gopakumar, Identification of Biomarkers and Functional Modules from Genomic Data in Stage-wise Breast Cancer, Current Bioinformatics 2021; 16 (5) . https://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1574893615999200922123104