Verifying the markers of ovarian cancer using RNA-seq data

Markers associated with diagnosis, presentation and potential therapeutic targets have received widespread attention in ovarian cancer research in the past few years. However, the majority of these markers have been investigated individually, and the changes in expression and the association between them are rarely documented. Next‑generation sequencing, also termed RNA-seq when the sequencing targets are cDNAs, can provide a whole blueprint of the transcriptome of a specific tissue. In the present study, RNA-seq data of human ovarian cancer samples were used to verify the expression of known markers and to identify the association between them. A total of 563 markers associated with ovarian cancer were retrieved from the database of the National Center of Biotechnology Information, and used as the target markers. The transcriptome of the ovarian tissue of four different tumors, containing tumor presentation and recurrence stages, were sequenced using the Illumina GAII platform. Approximately 85.97% markers were expressed of the total 563 markers, and the majority of them were involved in pathways associated with cancer, signaling and infection. In total, 85 markers were found to be aberrantly expressed in tumor cells from patients with ovarian cancer who had recurrences, including 33 upregulated markers at the recurrence stage. Therefore, they may have roles ovarian tumor due to their aberrant expression. Differentially expressed markers and the associations between them can be assessed by examining the RNA-seq data. These findings may provide novel information for further studies on ovarian cancer.