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Research Paper|Volume 12, Issue 20|pp 20332—20349

Identification of long-term survival-associated gene in breast cancer

Shipeng Ning1,2, Hui Li1,2, Kun Qiao1,2, Qin Wang1,2, Meiying Shen1,2, Yujuan Kang1,2, Yanling Yin1,2, Jiena Liu1,2, Lei Liu1,2, Siyu Hou1,2, Jianyu Wang1,2, Shouping Xu1,2,3, Da Pang1,2,3
  • 1Harbin Medical University, Harbin 150081, China
  • 2Department of Breast Surgery, Harbin Medical University Cancer Hospital, Harbin 150081, China
  • 3Heilongjiang Academy of Medical Sciences, Harbin 150086, China
Received: May 10, 2020Accepted: July 9, 2020Published: October 20, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Ning et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Breast cancer patients at the same stage may show different clinical prognoses or different therapeutic effects of systemic therapy. Differentially expressed genes of breast cancer were identified from GSE42568. Through survival, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve, random forest, GSVA and a Cox regression model analyses, genes were identified that could be associated with survival time in breast cancer. The molecular mechanism was identified by enrichment, GSEA, methylation and SNV analyses. Then, the expression of a key gene was verified by the TCGA dataset and RT-qPCR, Western blot, and immunohistochemistry. We identified 784 genes related to the 5-year overall survival time of breast cancer. Through ROC curve and random forest analysis, 10 prognostic genes were screened. These were integrated into a complex by GSVA, and high expression of the complex significantly promoted the recurrence-free survival of patients. In addition, key genes were related to immune and metabolic-related functions. Importantly, we identified methylation of MEX3A and TBC1D 9 and mutations events. Finally, the expression of UGCG was verified by the TCGA dataset and by experimental methods in our own samples. These results indicate that 10 genes may be potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets for long-term survival in breast cancer, especially UGCG.