Global analyses of subtype- or stage-specific genes on chromosome 7 in patients with lung cancer

Lung cancer is the most common cancer and becomes the leading cause of cancer mortality. Genetic and epigenetic alterations and variations are important to identify target genes in lung cancer and demonstrate the potential association of the chromosome 7 aberration with tumorigenesis. The present article integrated the independent and scattered global datasets to detect significant genes, co-expressed, type-special and stage-special genes in lung cancer with a special focus on chromosome 7 with bioinformatics analysis methods. About 60, 214, 26, or 49 up-regulated type-special genes, and 67, 35, 114, or 141 down-regulated type-special genes were identified in adenocarcinoma (ADC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), large cell carcinoma (LCC) or small-cell lung cancer (SCLC), respectively. About 5, 2, 8, or 1 stage-specific genes were up-regulated, while 23, 8, 2, or 90 stage-specific genes were down-regulated in ADC at stage I, II, III, or IV, respectively. Two stage-specific genes were significantly up-regulated in SCC at stage II, while 2 or 18 stage-specific genes in SCC at stage I or III were down-regulated, respectively. Lung cancer prognostic prediction rates of subtype- or stage-specific genes were further evaluated. The present study globally analyzed and identified subtype- or stage-specific target genes of lung cancer on chromosome 7 by combining 16 GSE datasets for the first time, although there are still needs to furthermore validate the clinical values of those identified genes in a large population of patients with lung cancer.