Analysis of Staged Features of Gastritis-Cancer Transformation and Identification of Potential Biomarkers in Gastric Cancer

PURPOSE: This work aims to elucidate the staged characteristics during gastritis-cancer transformation based on the transcriptome and use bioinformatics to identify potential biomarkers. PATIENTS AND METHODS: We collected blood samples from healthy controls, patients with non-atrophic gastritis, atrophic gastritis, and gastric cancer, and tissue samples from patients with gastric cancer, respectively. RNA-seq was then performed. Differentially expressed genes, weighted gene co-expression network analysis and functional enrichment analysis were used to illustrate the staged characteristics of gastritis-cancer transformation. Genes with diagnostic potential were further identified in combination with ROC analysis. Additionally, for the gastric cancer stage, the gene expression of the collected tissue transcriptome was validated using the Cancer Genome Atlas and combined with survival analysis to identify potential biomarkers. RESULTS: The 279 overlapping genes among the differentially expressed genes of NAG, AG and CA indicated that the expression characteristics of different stages were different. However, the 2243 overlapping genes of differential genes between adjacent stages indicated a certain consistency in the expression characteristics of stage development. The core functions of different stages have strong stage specificity and basically have no similarities. Twenty genes with diagnostic potential for AG or CA were obtained, respectively, and no gene could effectively differentiate NAG samples. Thirty-four potential biomarkers for gastric cancer were identified, of which 14 genes have not been reported, including ACTG2, C1QTNF2, NCAPH and SORCS1. CONCLUSION: There may be a stable development mechanism in the process of gastritis-carcinoma transformation, resulting in the differences in the performance of each stage. The newly discovered staging features and potential biomarkers in this work can provide references for related research.