Extracting Potential New Targets for Treatment of Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma using Bioinformatic Methods

Adenoid cystic carcinoma is a slow-growing malignancy that most often occurs in the salivary glands. Currently, no FDA-approved therapeutic target or diagnostic biomarker has been identified for this cancer. The aim of this study was to find new therapeutic and diagnostic targets using bioinformatics methods.

We extracted the gene expression information from two GEO datasets (including GSE59701 and GSE88804). DEGs between ACC and normal samples were extracted using R software. The biochemical pathways involved in ACC were obtained by using the Enrichr database. PPI network was drawn by STRING, and important genes were extracted by Cytoscape. Real-time PCR and immunohistochemistry were used for biomarker verification.

After analyzing the PPI network, 20 hub genes were introduced to have potential as diagnostic and therapeutic targets. Among these genes, PLCG1 was presented as new biomarker in ACC. Furthermore, by studying the function of the hub genes in the enriched biochemical pathways, we found that IGF-1R/IR and PPARG pathways most likely play a critical role in tumorigenesis and drug resistance in ACC and have a high potential for selection as therapeutic targets in future studies.

In this study, we achieved the recognition of the pathways involving in ACC pathogenesis and also found potential targets for treatment and diagnosis of ACC. Further experimental studies are required to confirm the results of this study.