AUTHOR=Zhao Xu , Wu Shuang , Jing Jingjing 

TITLE=Identifying Diagnostic and Prognostic Biomarkers and Candidate Therapeutic Drugs of Gastric Cancer Based on Transcriptomics and Single-Cell Sequencing

JOURNAL=Pathology and Oncology Research

VOLUME=Volume 27 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.por-journal.com/journals/pathology-and-oncology-research/articles/10.3389/pore.2021.1609955

DOI=10.3389/pore.2021.1609955

ISSN=1532-2807

ABSTRACT=Background and Objective: Gastric cancer (GC) is an important health burden and the prognosis of GC is poor. We aimed to explore new diagnostic and prognostic indicators as well as potential therapeutic target for GC in the current study. 
Methods: We screened the overlapped differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from GSE54129 and TCGA STAD datasets. Protein-protein interaction network analysis recognized the hub genes among the DEGs. The roles of these genes in diagnosis, prognosis, immune and drug sensitivity of GC were analyzed using R studio. Finally, the clinical significant hub genes were verified using single cell RNA sequencing(scRNA-seq) data. 
Results: A total of 222 overlapping genes were screened, which enriched in extracellular matrix related pathways. Further, 17 hub genes were identified, and our findings demonstrated that BGN, COMP, COL5A2 and SPARC might be important diagnostic and prognostic indicators of GC, which were also correlated with immune cell infiltration,Tumor Mutation Burden (TMB), microsatellite instability (MSI) and sensitive to therapeutic drugs. The scRNA-seq results further confirmed that all four hub genes were highly expressed in GC. 
Conclusion: Based on transcriptomics and single cell sequencing, we identified four diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers of GC, including BGN, COMP, COL5A2 and SPARC, which also have potential as therapeutic targets for GC.