Identify clear cell renal cell carcinoma related genes by gene network

Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most prominent type of kidney cancer in adults. The patients within metastatic ccRCC have a poor 5-year survival rate that is less than 10%. It is essential to identify ccRCC -related genes to help with the understanding of molecular mechanism of ccRCC. In this literature, we aim to identify genes related to ccRCC based on a gene network. We collected gene expression level data of ccRCC from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) for our analysis. We constructed a co-expression gene network as the first step of our study. Then, the network sparse boosting approach was performed to select the genes which are relevant to ccRCC. Results of our study show there are 15 genes selected from the all genes we collected. Among these genes, 7 of them have been demonstrated to play a key role in development and progression or in drug response of ccRCC. This finding offers clues of gene markers for the treatment of ccRCC.