BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cancer (PC) remains one of the most lethal cancers. In contrast to the steady increase in survival for most cancers, the 5-year survival remains low for PC patients. METHODS: We describe a new pipeline that can be used to identify prognostic molecular biomarkers by identifying miRNA-mediated subpathways associated with PC. These modules were then further extracted from a comprehensive miRNA-gene network (CMGN). An exhaustive survival analysis was performed to estimate the prognostic value of these modules. RESULTS: We identified 105 miRNA-mediated subpathways associated with PC. Two subpathways within the MAPK signaling and cell cycle pathways were found to be highly related to PC. Of the miRNA-mRNA modules extracted from CMGN, six modules showed good prognostic performance in both independent validated datasets. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides novel insight into the mechanisms of PC. We inferred that six miRNA-mRNA modules could serve as potential prognostic molecular biomarkers in PC based on the pipeline we proposed.
BACKGROUND: Pancreatic cancer (PC) remains one of the most lethal cancers. In contrast to the steady increase in survival for most cancers, the 5-year survival remains low for PC patients. METHODS: We describe a new pipeline that can be used to identify prognostic molecular biomarkers by identifying miRNA-mediated subpathways associated with PC. These modules were then further extracted from a comprehensive miRNA-gene network (CMGN). An exhaustive survival analysis was performed to estimate the prognostic value of these modules. RESULTS: We identified 105 miRNA-mediated subpathways associated with PC. Two subpathways within the MAPK signaling and cell cycle pathways were found to be highly related to PC. Of the miRNA-mRNA modules extracted from CMGN, six modules showed good prognostic performance in both independent validated datasets. CONCLUSIONS: Our study provides novel insight into the mechanisms of PC. We inferred that six miRNA-mRNA modules could serve as potential prognostic molecular biomarkers in PC based on the pipeline we proposed.
Authors: Konstantinos G Sidiropoulos; Nicole M A White; Anna Bui; Qiang Ding; Peter Boulos; Georgios Pampalakis; Heba Khella; Joseph N Samuel; Georgia Sotiropoulou; George M Yousef Journal: Oncoscience Date: 2014-10-24