​CXCL8, THBS1, KIT may be key genes in metastasis of melanoma

June 5, 2020

Abstract

Melanoma has the highest mortality rate of all skin tumors, and metastases are the major cause of death from it. The molecular mechanism leading to melanoma metastasis is currently unclear. With the goal of revealing the underlying mechanism, three data sets with accession numbers GSE8401, GSE46517 and GSE7956 were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. After identifying the differentially expressed gene (DEG) of primary melanoma and metastatic melanoma, three kinds of analyses were performed, namely functional annotation, protein-protein interaction (PPI) network and module construction, and co-expression and drug-gene interaction prediction analysis. 41 up-regulated genes and 79 down-regulated genes were selected for subsequent analyses. Results of pathway enrichment analysis showed that extracellular matrix organization and proteoglycans in cancer are closely related to melanoma metastasis. In addition, seven pivotal genes were identified from PPI network, including CXCL8, THBS1, COL3A1, TIMP3, KIT, DCN, and IGFBP5, which have all been verified in the TCGA database, but only CXCL8, THBS1 and KIT had significant differences in expression. To conclude, CXCL8, THBS1 and KIT may be the key genes in the metastasis of melanoma and thus may be regarded as therapeutic targets in the future.

Source:

su w, guan y, huang b, et al. Bioinformatics analysis reveals key genes and pathways that promote melanoma metastasis. Research Square; 2020. DOI: 10.21203/rs.3.rs-25246/v1.