Identification of cancer prognosis-associated functional modules using differential co-expression networks

The rapid accumulation of cancer-related data owing to high-throughput technologies has provided unprecedented choices to understand the progression of cancer and discover functional networks in multiple cancers. Establishment of co-expression networks will help us to discover the systemic properties of carcinogenesis features and regulatory mechanisms of multiple cancers. Here, we proposed a computational workflow to identify differentially co-expressed gene modules across 8 cancer types by using combined gene differential expression analysis methods and a higher-order generalized singular value decomposition. Four co-expression modules were identified; and oncogenes and tumor suppressors were significantly enriched in these modules. Functional enrichment analysis demonstrated the significantly enriched pathways in these modules, including ECM-receptor interaction, focal adhesion and PI3K-Akt signaling pathway. The top-ranked miRNAs (mir-199, mir-29, mir-200) and transcription factors (FOXO4, E2A, NFAT, and MAZ) were identified, which play an important role in deregulating cellular energetics; and regulating angiogenesis and cancer immune system. The clinical significance of the co-expressed gene clusters was assessed by evaluating their predictability of cancer patients’ survival. The predictive power of different clusters and subclusters was demonstrated. Our results will be valuable in cancer-related gene function annotation and for the evaluation of cancer patients’ prognosis.