Genetic Profiles Playing Opposite Roles of Pathogenesis in Schizophrenia and Glioma

Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia were found having lower risks to develop cancers, including glioma. Based on this epidemiology, we hypothesized that there were gene profiles playing opposite roles in pathogenesis of schizophrenia and glioma.

Based on GEO datasets and TCGA, key genes of schizophrenia genes on the opposite development of glioma were screened by different expressed genes (DEGs) screening, weighted gene coexpression network analysis (WGCNA), disease-specific survival (DSS), and glioma grading and verified by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA).

First, 612 DEGs were screened from schizophrenia and control brain samples. Second, 134 key genes more specific to schizophrenia were left by WGCNA, with 93 key genes having annotations in TCGA. Third, DSS of glioma helped to find 42 key gene expressions of schizophrenia oppositely associated with survival of glioma. Finally, 24 key genes showed opposite expression trends in schizophrenia and different glioma grading, i.e., the upregulated key genes in schizophrenia expressed increasingly in higher grade glioma, and vice versa. CAMK2D and MPC2 were taken as the examples and evaluated by GSEA, which indeed showed opposite trends in the same pathways of schizophrenia and glioma.

This workflow of selecting novel targeted genes which may have opposite roles in pathogenesis of two diseases was firstly and innovatively generated by our team. Some filtered key genes were indeed found by their potential effects in several mechanism studies, indicating our process could be effective to generate novel targeted genes. These 24 key genes may provide potential directions for future biochemical and pharmacotherapeutic research studies.