Background: Colon cancer is common worldwide, with high morbidity and poor prognosis. Ferroptosis is a novel form of cell death driven by the accumulation of iron-dependent lipid peroxides, which differs from other programmed cell death mechanisms. Programmed cell death is a cancer hallmark, and ferroptosis is known to participate in various cancers, including colon cancer. Novel ferroptosis markers and targeted colon cancer therapies are urgently needed. To this end, we performed a preliminary exploration of ferroptosis-related genes in colon cancer to enable new treatment strategies.
Methods: Ferroptosis-related genes in colon cancer were obtained by data mining and screening for differentially expressed genes (DEGs) using bioinformatics analysis tools. We normalized the data across four independent datasets and a ferroptosis-specific database. Identified genes were validated by immunohistochemical analysis of pathological and healthy clinical samples.
Results: We identified DEGs in colon cancer that are involved in ferroptosis. Among these, five core genes were found: ELAVL1, GPX2, EPAS1, SLC7A5, and HMGB1. Bioinformatics analyses revealed that the expression of all five genes, except for EPAS1, was higher in tumor tissues than in healthy tissues.
Conclusions: The preliminary exploration of the five core genes revealed that they are differentially expressed in colon cancer, playing an essential role in ferroptosis. This study provides a foundation for subsequent research on ferroptosis in colon cancer.
Keywords: bioinformatics; colon cancer; data mining; differentially expressed genes; ferroptosis; lipid peroxidation.
Copyright © 2022 Huang, Dai, Duan, Yuan, Li, Zhang, Zhu, Yu, Zhong and Feng.