For robust big data analyses: a collection of 150 important pro-metastatic genes

Abstract

Metastasis is the greatest contributor to cancer-related death. In the era of precision medicine, it is essential to predict and to prevent the spread of cancer cells to significantly improve patient survival. Thanks to the application of a variety of high-throughput technologies, accumulating big data enables researchers and clinicians to identify aggressive tumors as well as patients with a high risk of cancer metastasis. However, there have been few large-scale gene collection studies to enable metastasis-related analyses. In the last several years, emerging efforts have identified pro-metastatic genes in a variety of cancers, providing us the ability to generate a pro-metastatic gene cluster for big data analyses. We carefully selected 285 genes with in vivo evidence of promoting metastasis reported in the literature. These genes have been investigated in different tumor types. We used two datasets downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, specifically, datasets of clear cell renal cell carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma, for validation tests, and excluded any genes for which elevated expression level correlated with longer overall survival in any of the datasets. Ultimately, 150 pro-metastatic genes remained in our analyses. We believe this collection of pro-metastatic genes will be helpful for big data analyses, and eventually will accelerate anti-metastasis research and clinical intervention.

MiR‑506 inhibits cell proliferation, invasion, migration and epithelial‑to‑mesenchymal transition through targeting RWDD4 in human bladder cancer

“…Consistent with this previous study, we found downregulated RWDD4 inhibited TCC cell proliferation, migration and invasion in vitro. Based on large-scale data analyses, cancer metastasis has been established as a complicated procedure driven by more than 100 genes (24,25). Whether and how RWDD4 is involved in the miR-506-mediated regulation of EMT remains to be clarified in further studies.…”

Regulatory interactions between long noncoding RNA LINC00968 and miR‑9‑3p in non‑small cell lung cancer: A bioinformatic analysis based on miRNA microarray, GEO and TCGA

“…In addition, the gene E2F1 is an important transcription factor and is one of the most important pro-metastatic genes. Mei et al (48) observed that E2F1 had a significant effect on the prognosis of patients and was closely associated with patient survival, suggesting that E2F1 has an important role in the progression of clear cell renal cell carcinoma and hepatocellular carcinoma.…”

S100B expression in breast cancer as a predictive marker for cancer metastasis

“…There are >20 genes in the S100 family and some of these are considered as tumor markers (7). A recent study suggested that S100A4 and S100P, which are members of the S100 family, serve as pro-metastatic factors (8). S100B (also known as S100beta) also belongs to the S100 family.…”