Chemosensitivity of gastric cancer: analysis of key pathogenic transcription factors.

Background: We aimed to screen the key pathogenic transcription factors of gastric cancer and analyzed the correlation between the expression of transcription factors and chemotherapy drugs in gastric cancer.

Methods: Gastric cancer RNA sequencing data sets, single nucleotide polymorphism data sets, and corresponding clinical data sets were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas, which is public data. The expression of transcription factors in gastric cancer and normal tissues was analyzed with R software. Pathway enrichment analysis of differentially expressed transcription factors was performed using the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes database. Univariate Cox analysis was used to explore the correlation between the differential expression of transcription factors and prognosis. The interaction network among differentially expressed transcription factors was constructed using String database. Spearman test was used to explore the correlation between transcription factor mutation and gene expression. The Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer database was used to examine the relationship between the expression of transcription factors and chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity.

Results: A total of 17 differentially expressed transcription factors were screened. The results indicated that , , , , , and were prognostic risk factors for gastric cancer patients (P<0.05), while and were prognostic protective factors for gastric cancer patients (P<0.05). interacted with , , , , and . gene mutation was positively correlated with the expression level (P<0.05). Based on the median value of , the patients were divided into high expression group and low expression group of . There was no significant difference in IC50 of 5-fluorouracil between the high expression group and the low expression group (P>0.05). The IC50 of paclitaxel in the high expression group was higher than that in the low expression group (P<0.001). The expression of IC50 of cisplatin in the high expression group was higher than that in the low expression group (P<0.05).

Conclusions: was a highly expressed transcription factor in gastric cancer. High expression was associated with the resistance of gastric cancer patients to paclitaxel and cisplatin. Therefore, is a potential therapeutic target for gastric cancer.