An Integrated Study on the Differential Expression of the FOX Gene Family in Cancer and Their Response to Chemotherapy Drugs

Abstract

The Forkhead-box (FOX) transcription factors, as one of the largest gene families in humans, play key roles in cancer. Although studies have suggested that several FOX transcription factors have a significant impact on cancer, the functions of most of the FOX genes in cancer remain elusive. In the study, the expression of 43 FOX genes in 63 kinds of cancer diseases (including many subtypes of same cancer) and in response to 60 chemical substances was obtained from the Gene Expression Atlas database of the European Bioinformatics Institute. Based on the high degree of overlap in FOXO family members differentially expressed in various cancers and their particular responses to chemotherapeutic drugs, our data disclosed the FOX genes that played an important role in the development and progression of cancer. More importantly, we predicted the role of one or several combinatorial FOX genes in the diagnosis and prognostic assessment of a specific cancer and evaluated the potential of a certain anticancer drug therapy for this type of cancer by integrating patterns of FOX genes expression with anticancer drugs sensitivity.

Pan‐cancer analyses reveal multi‐omic signatures and clinical implementations of the forkhead‐box gene family

“… 1 , 12 In general, both GTEx expression data 36 and Unigene EST profiles demonstrate that the FOX gene family exhibits two main expression patterns: nearly ubiquitous expression in all tissues (~ 25% of FOX genes) and selective expression to specific tissue(s) (~75% of FOX genes). The entire FOX gene family's expression pattern across various cancers has never been reported prior to a recent study by Yin et al 37 Due to the study's main findings concentrating on other areas, however, few conclusive findings were discussed on this. Here we provide the first expression landscape of FOX gene family in 16 major cancer types from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA).…”