The impacts of differential expression of transcription factors on the
survival of TCGA cancer patients
Abstract
One of the major challenges in cancer research is identifying biomarkers
involved in molecular aspects of cancer, including initiation,
progression, and therapy outcomes of different cancers. Survival
analysis is used to predict the impacts of alteration in gene expression
of specific genes on cancer progression. Although studying the impacts
of all genes would be infeasible, understanding the survival impacts of
transcription factors might be useful. TCGA datasets have been widely
used to do such analysis. Here, we have studied the impacts of
transcription factors with a proven role in cancer (Oncofactors) on
patients’ survival in 13 major TCGA datasets. We have first identified
the differentially expressed genes among patients and healthy people.
Next, we selected the differentially expressed oncofactors among these
genes. In the next step, using clinical data, the survival analysis of
each cancer type was conducted using a p-value of 0.01 as the
significance level. Interestingly, different sets of TFs were
significantly associated with survival for each type of cancer.
Unexpectedly, our results indicate that only a limited number of
oncofactors might impact on overall survival of cancer patients.