Identification of pathways involved in paclitaxel activity in cervical cancer

Paclitaxel is one of the key chemotherapeutic drugs widely used to treat various types of cancer. Many cervical cancer patients exhibit selectivity in response to thereapy, however, which is considered to be correlated with drug-gene-pathways. The aim of this study was to identify pathways involved in paclitaxel activity in cervical cancer. Gene expression data was obtained from the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus and the associations between paclitaxel and genes from DrugBank, MATADOR, TTD, CTD and SuperTarget databases. Differentially expressed genes in cervical cancer were identified using the significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) statistical technique. Pathway analysis was performed according to the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database using the software package SubpathwayMiner to predict target genes of paclitaxel in cervical cancer and regulated pathways. We found that paclitaxel, which exhibits anticancer activity in cervical cancer, may interact with these differentially expressed genes and their corresponding signaling pathways. Our study presents the first in-depth, large-scale analysis of pathways involved in paclitaxel activity in cervical cancer. Interestingly, these pathways have not been reported to be involved in other tumors. Thus our findings may contribute to the understanding of the mechanisms underlying paclitaxel resistance in cervical cancer.