Transcriptional Profiles from Paired Normal Samples Offer Complementary Information on Cancer Patient Survival--Evidence from TCGA Pan-Cancer Data.

ABSTRACT: Although normal tissue samples adjacent to tumors are sometimes collected from patients in cancer studies, they are often used as normal controls to identify genes differentially expressed between tumor and normal samples. However, it is in general more difficult to obtain and clearly define paired normal samples, and whether these samples should be treated as "normal" due to their close proximity to tumors. In this article, by analyzing the accrued data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), we show the surprising results that the paired normal samples are in general more informative on patient survival than tumors. Different lines of evidence suggest that this is likely due to tumor micro-environment instead of tumor cell contamination or field cancerization effect. Pathway analyses suggest

SUBMITTER: Huang X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4738355 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature