Meta-Analysis of Public Microarray Datasets Reveals Voltage-Gated Calcium Gene Signatures in Clinical Cancer Patients

Chih-Yang Wang; Ming-Derg Lai; Nam Nhut Phan; Zhengda Sun; Yen-Chang Lin

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0125766

Meta-Analysis of Public Microarray Datasets Reveals Voltage-Gated Calcium Gene Signatures in Clinical Cancer Patients

PLoS One. 2015 Jul 6;10(7):e0125766. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125766. eCollection 2015.

Authors

Chih-Yang Wang¹, Ming-Derg Lai², Nam Nhut Phan³, Zhengda Sun⁴, Yen-Chang Lin⁵

Affiliations

¹ Department of Anatomy, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America; Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
² Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan.
³ Faculty of Applied Sciences, Ton Duc Thang University, Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam.
⁴ Department of Radiology, University of California San Francisco, San Francisco, California, United States of America.
⁵ Graduate Institute of Biotechnology, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, Taiwan.

Abstract

Voltage-gated calcium channels (VGCCs) are well documented to play roles in cell proliferation, migration, and apoptosis; however, whether VGCCs regulate the onset and progression of cancer is still under investigation. The VGCC family consists of five members, which are L-type, N-type, T-type, R-type and P/Q type. To date, no holistic approach has been used to screen VGCC family genes in different types of cancer. We analyzed the transcript expression of VGCCs in clinical cancer tissue samples by accessing ONCOMINE (www.oncomine.org), a web-based microarray database, to perform a systematic analysis. Every member of the VGCCs was examined across 21 different types of cancer by comparing mRNA expression in cancer to that in normal tissue. A previous study showed that altered expression of mRNA in cancer tissue may play an oncogenic role and promote tumor development; therefore, in the present findings, we focus only on the overexpression of VGCCs in different types of cancer. This bioinformatics analysis revealed that different subtypes of VGCCs (CACNA1C, CACNA1D, CACNA1B, CACNA1G, and CACNA1I) are implicated in the development and progression of diverse types of cancer and show dramatic up-regulation in breast cancer. CACNA1F only showed high expression in testis cancer, whereas CACNA1A, CACNA1C, and CACNA1D were highly expressed in most types of cancer. The current analysis revealed that specific VGCCs likely play essential roles in specific types of cancer. Collectively, we identified several VGCC targets and classified them according to different cancer subtypes for prospective studies on the underlying carcinogenic mechanisms. The present findings suggest that VGCCs are possible targets for prospective investigation in cancer treatment.

Publication types

Meta-Analysis
Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Calcium Channels / genetics*
Datasets as Topic*
Humans
Ion Channel Gating*
Neoplasms / genetics*

Substances

Calcium Channels

Grants and funding

Computational analyses and data mining were performed using the system provided by the Bioinformatics Core at the National Cheng Kung University, supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan. The authors thank the National Science Council (NSC) of the Executive Yuan, Taiwan [NSC 101-2320-B-034 -001] for the grant. The authors also thank the Ministry of Science and Technology for the grants MOST103-2325-B006-012 and 104-2917-I-006-002. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.