A rank-based transcriptional signature for predicting relapse risk of stage II colorectal cancer identified with proper data sources.

ABSTRACT: The irreproducibility problem seriously hinders the studies on transcriptional signatures for predicting relapse risk of early stage colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Through reviewing recently published 34 literatures for the development of CRC prognostic signatures based on gene expression profiles, we revealed a surprising phenomenon that 33 of these studies analyzed CRC samples with and without adjuvant chemotherapy together in the training and/or validation datasets. This data misuse problem could be partially attributed to the unclear and incomplete data annotation in public data sources. Furthermore, all the signatures proposed by these studies were based on risk scores summarized from gene expression levels, which are sensitive to experimental batch effects and risk compositions of

SUBMITTER: Zhao W 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4951352 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature