Neural activities are unfavorable for the prognosis of ovarian cancer through mRNA expression analysis

Abstract

Aim: Ovarian cancer (OC) is the leading lethal gynecological cancer in women worldwide. Understanding the molecular mechanism of OC is very important for the identification of highly sensitive biomarkers for its prognosis. Methodology: We detected prognostic-related mRNA of OC in OncoLnc database. The main features between the unfavorable and favorable prognostic OC mRNAs were analyzed and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathway enrichment as well as correlation analysis was conducted in our study. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that neural activities can promote OC progression, indicating poor prognosis, among which axon guidance functions most significantly govern the main neural activities, followed by neurogenesis and angiogenesis. Four neural genes (NTN1, UNC5B, EFNB2 and EFNA5) could serve as promising biomarkers and therapeutic targets for precision medicine to treat OC patients.