Association between expression of random gene sets and survival is evident in multiple cancer types and may be explained by sub-classification.

ABSTRACT: One of the goals of cancer research is to identify a set of genes that cause or control disease progression. However, although multiple such gene sets were published, these are usually in very poor agreement with each other, and very few of the genes proved to be functional therapeutic targets. Furthermore, recent findings from a breast cancer gene-expression cohort showed that sets of genes selected randomly can be used to predict survival with a much higher probability than expected. These results imply that many of the genes identified in breast cancer gene expression analysis may not be causal of cancer progression, even though they can still be highly predictive of prognosis. We performed a similar analysis on all the cancer types available in the cancer genome atlas (TCGA), namely, e

SUBMITTER: Shimoni Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5839591 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature