Identification of Hub Genes Associated with the Progression of Non-small Cell Lung Carcinoma

Non-small cell lung carcinoma is the most prevalent type of lung cancer which causes about one million death worldwide. Although patients with the early stage of NSCLC have better responses to drugs, the overall five-year survival remains poor for the patients with the late stages of this cancer. Therefore, understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying the progression of NSCLC, like alterations in expression profile, is essential to find new therapeutic targets and increase the patient’s survival. Bioinformatic tools and microarray together with next-generation sequencing studies have important roles in finding hub genes in the network of differentially expressed genes. Thus, this study aims to find hub genes which are associated with NSCLC and study their correlations with the patients’ survival.In this study, two microarray studies of GSE21933 and GSE21933 from GEO database were selected. To find differentially expressed genes in tumor samples versus controls, the R software was used. Gene ontology and KEGG gene enrichment analysis were performed by GSEA website. Cytoscape software and Cytohubba plugin were used to identify the hub genes. The correlation between each canonical gene and patients’ survival was extracted from the Kaplan Meier plotter website.The results showed that the hub genes in the network of late stage-specific differentially expressed genes are EGF, CCT2, CCT5, PDIA6, AR, WDR12, PNPLA2, PENK, NUP37 and SNAI2. All genes except PNPLA2 and SNAI2, showed a significant correlation with the patients’ overall survival.This study introduced hub genes which are associated with the late-stage NSCLC. Possibly, they could be targeted to inhibit NSCLC progression and increase the survival of patients with NSCLC.