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Cross-cancer transcriptomic integration identifies a core immune-signaling network in hormone-driven malignancies
Prasanna Kumar Selvam1, Supraja Mohan1, Karthick Vasudevan1
1Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India; Institute of Bioinformatics, International Technology Park, Bangalore, India.
Advances in Protein Chemistry and Structural Biology
|July 14, 2026
Summary
This study found a shared immune-signaling transcriptional program in breast, ovarian, and thyroid cancers. Prostate cancer showed less overlap, suggesting distinct molecular drivers in hormone-driven malignancies.
Area of Science:
- Genomics and Molecular Biology
- Cancer Research
- Endocrinology
Background:
- Hormone-dependent cancers (breast, ovarian, thyroid, prostate) are driven by endocrine signaling but show molecular heterogeneity.
- Understanding shared transcriptional programs across these cancers is crucial for developing targeted therapies.
- Existing research has not fully elucidated conserved gene expression signatures in hormone-driven malignancies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To identify conserved gene expression signatures across hormone-driven cancers using a systematic transcriptomic framework.
- To investigate the degree of transcriptional overlap and directionality of gene dysregulation among breast, ovarian, thyroid, and prostate cancers.
- To define a core pan-hormone transcriptional signature and analyze its functional characteristics.
Main Methods:
- Applied a direction-aware transcriptomic framework to RNA-sequencing data from hormone-driven cancers and matched controls.
- Performed differential gene expression analysis using DESeq2 for each cancer type.
- Integrated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) across cancers using a presence-direction matrix and conducted leave-one-out sensitivity analysis.
Main Results:
- Identified 15,648 significant DEGs across the four cancer types, with limited universal overlap (only one gene shared across all four).
- Prostate cancer exhibited lower transcriptional concordance; excluding it revealed 10,948 shared DEGs across breast, ovarian, and thyroid cancers.
- A core pan-hormone signature of 270 genes was defined for breast, ovarian, and thyroid cancers, enriched for immune signaling and cytokine-related functions.
Conclusions:
- A conserved, immune-signaling-centric transcriptional program is shared among breast, ovarian, and thyroid cancers.
- Prostate cancer displays distinct transcriptional patterns compared to the other hormone-dependent malignancies studied.
- These findings highlight potential common therapeutic targets and underscore the importance of considering cancer-specific molecular profiles.
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