Analysis of Staged Features of Gastritis-Cancer Transformation and Identification of Potential Biomarkers in Gastric Cancer

Ruikang Jia; Xiaohui Guo; Huiyun Liu; Feiyue Zhao; Zhibin Fan; Menglei Wang; Jianliang Sui; Binghua Yin; Zhihong Wang; Zhen Wang

doi:10.2147/JIR.S390448

Analysis of Staged Features of Gastritis-Cancer Transformation and Identification of Potential Biomarkers in Gastric Cancer

J Inflamm Res. 2022 Dec 28:15:6857-6868. doi: 10.2147/JIR.S390448. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Ruikang Jia^#^{1

2}, Xiaohui Guo^#³, Huiyun Liu², Feiyue Zhao², Zhibin Fan², Menglei Wang², Jianliang Sui^{1

2}, Binghua Yin³, Zhihong Wang⁴, Zhen Wang^{1

5}

Affiliations

¹ The Affiliated Hospital and the Medical College, Hebei University of Engineering, Handan, Hebei Province, People's Republic of China.
² Key Laboratory of Chinese Medicine for Gastric Medicine, Hebei Province, Handan Pharmaceutical Co. LTD, Handan, People's Republic of China.
³ Handan Central Hospital, Handan, Hebei Province, People's Republic of China.
⁴ People's Hospital of Huangzhou District, Huanggang City, People's Republic of China.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Metabolism and Molecular Medicine, Ministry of Education, and Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, Fudan University Shanghai Medical College, Shanghai, People's Republic of China.

^# Contributed equally.

Abstract

Purpose: This work aims to elucidate the staged characteristics during gastritis-cancer transformation based on the transcriptome and use bioinformatics to identify potential biomarkers.

Patients and methods: We collected blood samples from healthy controls, patients with non-atrophic gastritis, atrophic gastritis, and gastric cancer, and tissue samples from patients with gastric cancer, respectively. RNA-seq was then performed. Differentially expressed genes, weighted gene co-expression network analysis and functional enrichment analysis were used to illustrate the staged characteristics of gastritis-cancer transformation. Genes with diagnostic potential were further identified in combination with ROC analysis. Additionally, for the gastric cancer stage, the gene expression of the collected tissue transcriptome was validated using the Cancer Genome Atlas and combined with survival analysis to identify potential biomarkers.

Results: The 279 overlapping genes among the differentially expressed genes of NAG, AG and CA indicated that the expression characteristics of different stages were different. However, the 2243 overlapping genes of differential genes between adjacent stages indicated a certain consistency in the expression characteristics of stage development. The core functions of different stages have strong stage specificity and basically have no similarities. Twenty genes with diagnostic potential for AG or CA were obtained, respectively, and no gene could effectively differentiate NAG samples. Thirty-four potential biomarkers for gastric cancer were identified, of which 14 genes have not been reported, including ACTG2, C1QTNF2, NCAPH and SORCS1.

Conclusion: There may be a stable development mechanism in the process of gastritis-carcinoma transformation, resulting in the differences in the performance of each stage. The newly discovered staging features and potential biomarkers in this work can provide references for related research.

Keywords: bioinformatics; biomarker; gastritis-cancer transformation; transcriptome.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the [Youth program of National Natural Science Foundation of China #1] under Grant [number 32100569]; [Biomedical Joint Fund of Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province #2] under Grant [number H2021402005]; and [Key R&D plan of Hebei Province #3] under Grant [number 21372507D&22372501D]; and [Scientific Research Project of Hebei Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine #4] under Grant [number 2022318&2022319].