With the WHO in China

E-cadherin is a transmembrane glycoprotein which connects epithelial cells together at adherens junctions. In normal cells, E-cadherin exerts its tumour suppressing role mainly by sequestering β-catenin from its binding to LEF (Lymphoid enhancer factor)/TCF (T cell factor) which serves the function of transcribing genes of the proliferative Wnt signaling pathway. Despite the ongoing debate on whether the loss of E-cadherin is the cause or effect of epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), E-cadherin functional loss has frequently been associated with poor prognosis and survival in patients of various cancers. The dysregulation of E-cadherin expression that leads to carcinogenesis happens mostly at the epigenetic level but there are cases of genetic alterations as well. E-cadherin expression has been linked to the cellular functions of invasiveness reduction, growth inhibition, apoptosis, cell cycle arrest and differentiation. Studies on various cancers have shown that these different cellular functions are also interdependent. Recent studies have reported a rapid expansion of E-cadherin clinical relevance in various cancers. This review article summarises the multifaceted effect E-cadherin expression has on cellular functions in the context of carcinogenesis as well as its clinical implications in diagnosis, prognosis and therapeutics.

E-cadherin: Its dysregulation in carcinogenesis and clinical implications

The seventh edition of the non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) TNM staging system was developed by the International Association for the Staging of Lung Cancer (IASLC) Lung Cancer Staging Project by a coordinated international effort to develop data-derived TNM classifications with significant survival differences. Based on these TNM groupings, current 5-year survival estimates in NSLCC range from 73 % in stage IA disease to 13 % in stage IV disease. TNM stage remains the most important prognostic factor in predicting recurrence rates and survival times, followed by tumor histologic grade, and patient sex, age, and performance status. Molecular prognostication in lung cancer is an exploding area of research where interest has moved beyond TNM stage and into individualized genetic tumor analysis with immunohistochemistry, microarray, and mutation profiles. However, despite intense research efforts and countless publications, no molecular prognostic marker has been adopted into clinical use since most fail in subsequent cross-validation with few exceptions. The recent interest in immunotherapy for NSCLC has identified new biomarkers with early evidence that suggests that PD-L1 is a predictive marker of a good response to new immunotherapy drugs but a poor prognostic indicator of overall survival. Future prognostication of outcomes in NSCLC will likely be based on a combination of TNM stage and molecular tumor profiling and yield more precise, individualized survival estimates and treatment algorithms.

Lung Cancer Staging and Prognosis

Cox regression is commonly used to predict the outcome by the time to an event of interest and in addition, identify relevant features for survival analysis in cancer genomics. Due to the high-dimensionality of high-throughput genomic data, existing Cox models trained on any particular dataset usually generalize poorly to other independent datasets. In this paper, we propose a network-based Cox regression model called Net-Cox and applied Net-Cox for a large-scale survival analysis across multiple ovarian cancer datasets. Net-Cox integrates gene network information into the Cox's proportional hazard model to explore the co-expression or functional relation among high-dimensional gene expression features in the gene network. Net-Cox was applied to analyze three independent gene expression datasets including the TCGA ovarian cancer dataset and two other public ovarian cancer datasets. Net-Cox with the network information from gene co-expression or functional relations identified highly consistent signature genes across the three datasets, and because of the better generalization across the datasets, Net-Cox also consistently improved the accuracy of survival prediction over the Cox models regularized by or . This study focused on analyzing the death and recurrence outcomes in the treatment of ovarian carcinoma to identify signature genes that can more reliably predict the events. The signature genes comprise dense protein-protein interaction subnetworks, enriched by extracellular matrix receptors and modulators or by nuclear signaling components downstream of extracellular signal-regulated kinases. In the laboratory validation of the signature genes, a tumor array experiment by protein staining on an independent patient cohort from Mayo Clinic showed that the protein expression of the signature gene FBN1 is a biomarker significantly associated with the early recurrence after 12 months of the treatment in the ovarian cancer patients who are initially sensitive to chemotherapy. Net-Cox toolbox is available at http://compbio.cs.umn.edu/Net-Cox/.

/pdf/network-based-survival-analysis-reveals-subnetwork-40yh97pvw4.pdf

Network-based Survival Analysis Reveals Subnetwork Signatures for Predicting Outcomes of Ovarian Cancer Treatment

The role of DNA repair pathways in cisplatin resistant lung cancer

BACKGROUND Many studies have investigated the prognostic role of E-cadherin in patients with NSCLC; however, the result still remains inconclusive. An up-to data system review and meta-analysis was necessary to give a comprehensive evaluation of prognostic role of E-cadherin in NSCLC. METHODS Eligible studies were searched in Pubmed, Embase and Web of Science databases. The inclusion criteria were studies that assessed the relationship between E-cadherin expression detected by immunohistochemistry (IHC) and the prognosis or clinicopathological features in patients with NSCLC. Subgroup analysis according to race, percentage of reduced/negative E-cadherin expression, histological type, and sample size were also conducted. Odds ratio (OR) or hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to examine the risk or hazard association. RESULTS A total of 29 studies including 4010 patients were qualified for analysis. The analysis suggested that downregulated E-cadherin expression was significant associated with unfavorable overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival/progression-free survival (DFS/PFS) in patients with NSCLC. Subgroup analysis by race, percentage of reduced/negative E-cadherin expression, sample size also found the significant association in OS. When only the stage I NSCLC were considered, downregulated E-cadherin expression still had an unfavorable impact on OS. Additionally, downregulated E-cadherin expression was significantly associated with differentiation grade, lymphnode metastasis, vascular invasion, and TNM stage. CONCLUSION Downregulated E-cadherin expression detected by IHC seems to correlate with tumour progression and could serve as an important prognostic factor in patients with NSCLC.

/pdf/prognostic-and-clinicopathological-significance-of-1ovw8kiv1o.pdf

Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of downregulated E-cadherin expression in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): a meta-analysis.

Background
The aim of this study was to investigate prognostic value of excision repair cross-complementing 1 (ERCC1), BCL2-associated athanogene (BAG-1), the breast and ovarian cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1), ribonucleotide reductase subunit M1 (RRM1) and class III β-tubulin (TUBB3) in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who received platinum- based adjuvant chemotherapy.

/pdf/combined-analysis-of-mrna-expression-of-ercc1-bag-1-brca1-3i83cwswer.pdf

Combined analysis of mRNA expression of ERCC1, BAG-1, BRCA1, RRM1 and TUBB3 to predict prognosis in patients with non-small cell lung cancer who received adjuvant chemotherapy

Background 
A number of studies have examined the relationship between the expression of the class III β-tubulin (TUBB3) and the treatment responses to the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). However, the results of these studies were inconsistent and inconclusive. Therefore, we conducted an up-to-date meta-analysis to evaluate the prognostic role of TUBB3 in the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy.


Methods 
A literature search for relevant studies was conducted in PubMed, Embase, and CNKI. The inclusion criteria were the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy in patients with NSCLC and the evaluation of the clinical outcomes in relation to the expression of TUBB3. The clinical outcomes analyzed in this study included the overall response rate (ORR), overall survival (OS), and event-free survival (EFS). Odds ratio (OR) or hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) were calculated to assess the risk associated with the TUBB3 expression in the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy.


Results 
A total of 28 studies with 2401 NSCLC patients were qualified for this meta-analysis. We found that the positive or high level of TUBB3 expression was associated with a poorer ORR (OR = 0.24, 95% CI = 0.16–0.36, p<0.001), an unfavorable OS (HR = 1.52, 95% CI = 1.27–1.82, p<0.001), and a worse EFS (HR = 1.47, 95% CI = 1.24–1.74, p<0.001) compared to the negative or low level of TUBB3 expression. The statistically significant associations between TUBB3 and chemotherapy responses were also observed in the stratified subgroup analysis, which included the analysis by ethnic subgroup (Asian and Caucasian), chemotherapy regimen (taxane-based and vinorebine-based), TUBB3 detection method (IHC and PCR), and treatment strategy (surgery plus adjuvant chemotherapy and palliative chemotherapy).


Conclusions 
The expression level of TUBB3 may be a useful biomarker to predict the clinical outcomes of the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy in patients with NSCLC.

/pdf/the-prognostic-role-of-the-class-iii-b-tubulin-in-non-small-2g49h6egzn.pdf

The prognostic role of the class III β-tubulin in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients receiving the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy: a meta-analysis.

The recent studies have evaluated the relationship between BRCA1 expression and clinical outcome of chemotherapy (mainly focused on platinum-based and toxal-based treatment) in NSCLC patients, but the results were inconclusive and controversial. Our aim of this study was to evaluate this association by literature based system review and meta-analysis. PubMed, EMBASE and the China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases were used to retrieve the relevant articles. The interested outcome included objective response rate (ORR), overall survival (OS) and event-free survival (EFS). The pooled odds ratio (OR) or hazard ratio (HR) with 95% confidence interval (CI) ware estimated. After specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, 23 studies fulfilled the criteria and were included in our analysis. In 17 platinum-based studies, low/negative BRCA1 was in favor of better ORR (OR = 1.70, 95%CI = 1.32-2.18), longer OS and EFS (HR = 1.58, 95%CI = 1.27-1.97, and HR = 1.60, 95%CI = 1.07-2.39 for OS and EFS, respectively). In 4 toxal-based chemotherapy studies, the patients with high/positive BRCA1 had better ORR (OR = 0.41, 95%CI = 0.26-0.64), OS and EFS were not evaluated as the insufficient data available. Overall, BRCA1 might be a useful biomarker to predict clinical outcome for personal chemotherapy in NSCLC patients in the future.

/pdf/breast-cancer-susceptibility-gene-1-brca1-predict-clinical-1g1gjmwoh6.pdf

Breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) predict clinical outcome in platinum- and toxal-based chemotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients: a system review and meta-analysis

The incidence of thyroid cancer and its associated morbidity has shown the most rapid increase among all cancers since 1982, but the mechanisms involved in thyroid cancer, particularly significant key genes induced in thyroid cancer, remain undefined. In many studies, gene probes have been used to search for key genes involved in causing and facilitating thyroid cancer. As a result, many possible virulence genes and pathways have been identified. However, these studies lack a case contrast for selecting the most possible virulence genes and pathways, as well as conclusive results with which to clarify the mechanisms of cancer development. In the present study, we used gene set enrichment and meta-analysis to select key genes and pathways. Based on gene set enrichment, we identified 5 downregulated and 4 upregulated mixed pathways in 6 tissue datasets. Based on the meta-analysis, there were 17 common pathways in the tissue datasets. One pathway, the p53 signaling pathway, which includes 13 genes, was identified by both the gene set enrichment analysis and meta-analysis. Genes are important elements that form key pathways. These pathways can induce the development of thyroid cancer later in life. The key pathways and genes identified in the present study can be used in the next stage of research, which will involve gene elimination and other methods of experimentation.

https://www.spandidos-publications.com/10.3892/or.2013.2557/download

Lei Xian

Papers

Prognostic and clinicopathological significance of downregulated E-cadherin expression in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC): a meta-analysis.

Combined analysis of mRNA expression of ERCC1, BAG-1, BRCA1, RRM1 and TUBB3 to predict prognosis in patients with non-small cell lung cancer who received adjuvant chemotherapy

The prognostic role of the class III β-tubulin in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients receiving the taxane/vinorebine-based chemotherapy: a meta-analysis.

Breast cancer susceptibility gene 1 (BRCA1) predict clinical outcome in platinum- and toxal-based chemotherapy in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients: a system review and meta-analysis

Key genes and pathways in thyroid cancer based on gene set enrichment analysis.