Comprehensive network analysis of integrin α11 expressed in human breast cancer

Abstract

Background: Breast cancer is the most common malignancy in women worldwide, but few genes have been reported to be involved in breast cancer development. Methods: We constructed a co-expression network to expand upon the knowledge of the various molecular biomarkers in breast cancer development. Transcriptome data for the tissues of all breast cancer and para-carcinoma types were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We performed a co-expression analysis of breast cancer transcriptome data using Pearson’s correlation coefficient (PCC) for inter-sequence mutual rank (MR)-based cutoffs using 11 guide genes and employed Kaplan-Meier survival analyses to assess the prognostic values of hub genes. Results: A co-expression network centered on the Integrin α 11 (ITGA11) of the extracellular matrix (including 11 guide genes and 72 edge genes) was extracted for breast cancer. The gene ontology (GO) analysis showed that various genes may also be included in the breast cancer network. Among them, CEMIP, COL11A1, CTHRC1, ITGA11, LUM and P4HA3 were negatively associated with the overall survival, and ADAMTS12 and LOXL1 were positively associated with the overall survival at early stage. However, there was no significant difference between the eight gene expressions and Disease-free survival. Conclusions: Our co-expression analysis includes the isolated transcriptome of breast cancer, which is a useful resource for breast cancer researchers, as it enables them to elucidate important and complex biological events to prevent and predict cancer.

Collagen Type XI Alpha 1 (COL11A1): A Novel Biomarker and a Key Player in Cancer

“…Finally, although no study has tested whether integrin α11β1 can bind to COL11A1, the gene expression of integrin subunit α11 has been shown to correlate strongly with COL11A1 gene expression in a number of different cancer studies [ 70 , 91 , 92 ]. Of note, integrin α11β1 expression seems to be expressed mostly by fibroblasts and other stromal cells [ 93 ], and it is unknown whether cancer cells typically express, or express at all, integrin α11.…”