To investigate the potential role of Cystic Fibrosis Transmembrane Conductance Regula tor (CFTR) gene in stomach cancer subtypes we performed differential gene expression
analysis across six stomach cancer subtypes using data from the The Cancer Genome
Atlas Stomach Adenocarcinoma (TCGA-STAD). Further for each cancer subtype, we
explored modules of co-expressed genes using CEMiTool and over-representation analysis
of functional pathways. To enhance our analysis, we integrated experimental gene-gene
interaction networks and gene ontology analyses, to identify the potential role of CFTR
and its interactome. Co-expression analysis demonstrated that CFTR interacts with 58
genes in the signet ring cell cancer subtype, suggesting it plays a specific role in broader
regulatory networks rather than exhibiting strong, independent changes in expression
levels. Despite its hypothesized role, we did not observe significant differential expression
of the CFTR gene in a comprehensive analysis of 15 pairwise comparisons across six
molecular subtypes of stomach adenocarcinoma for STAD-TCGA. While CFTR did not
individually meet the criteria for differential expression, further investigation revealed
systemic insights into its involvement in gastric cancer. CFTR may play a critical role in
tumor biology by influencing the behavior of co-expressed genes and their related pathways.
These findings suggest that CFTR may influence cancer progression through complex
gene-gene interactions by pathway modulation.
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