Cancer-risk module identification and module-based disease risk evaluation: a case study on lung cancer

PLoS One. 2014 Mar 18;9(3):e92395. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0092395. eCollection 2014.

Abstract

Gene expression profiles have drawn broad attention in deciphering the pathogenesis of human cancers. Cancer-related gene modules could be identified in co-expression networks and be applied to facilitate cancer research and clinical diagnosis. In this paper, a new method was proposed to identify lung cancer-risk modules and evaluate the module-based disease risks of samples. The results showed that thirty one cancer-risk modules were closely related to the lung cancer genes at the functional level and interactional level, indicating that these modules and genes might synergistically lead to the occurrence of lung cancer. Our method was proved to have good robustness by evaluating the disease risk of samples in eight cancer expression profiles (four for lung cancer and four for other cancers), and had better performance than the WGCNA method. This method could provide assistance to the diagnosis and treatment of cancers and a new clue for explaining cancer mechanisms.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Biomarkers, Tumor / genetics*
  • Biomarkers, Tumor / metabolism
  • Case-Control Studies
  • Gene Ontology
  • Humans
  • Lung Neoplasms / diagnosis
  • Lung Neoplasms / genetics*
  • Lung Neoplasms / metabolism
  • ROC Curve
  • Risk Assessment
  • Transcriptome*

Substances

  • Biomarkers, Tumor

Grants and funding

Funding provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61272388 and No. 31301040); Oversea Scholars Project funded by Education Department of Heilongjiang Province (NO. 1155H012); and the Master Innovation Funds of Heilongjiang Province (No. YJSCX2012-209HLJ and YJSCX2012-224HLJ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.