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Integrative Assessment of RNA-seq and IHC: Linking Tumor Biomarkers and Microenvironment

ABSTRACT: This study aimed to assess the correlation between RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) in detecting key cancer biomarkers across solid tumors, and then, to establish RNA-seq thresholds that accurately reflect clinical IHC classifications. Expression levels of nine biomarkers—ESR1, PGR, AR, MKI67, ERBB2, CD274, CDX2, KRT7, and KRT20—were analyzed in 365 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded samples from breast, lung, gastrointestinal, and other solid carcinomas. Correlations between RNA-seq data and IHC scores were determined using Spearman’s correlation coefficients, with RNA-seq cut-offs established to distinguish positive from negative IHC scores. The results revealed strong correlations for most biomarkers, with coefficients ranging from 0.53 to 0.89. RNA-seq thresholds were confirmed across internal and external cohorts, demonstrating high diagnostic accuracy (up to 98%) and precision in identifying biomarker expression levels. The analysis also highlighted the influence of tumor microenvironment and purity, particularly in the moderate correlation 0.63 observed for PD-L1. Our study demonstrates that RNA-seq can serve as a robust complementary tool to IHC, offering objective and high-throughput biomarker assessment. The RNA-seq thresholds established provide a reliable method for determining biomarker positivity, supporting the integration of RNA-seq in clinical diagnostics to enhance precision, especially where tumor purity and microenvironment factors are significant.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE293591 | GEO | 2025/08/06

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Background: microRNAs (miRNAs) are approximately 21 nucleotide non-coding transcripts capable of regulating gene expression. The most widely studied mechanism of regulation involves binding of the miRNA to a target mRNA, usually in its 3’ untranslated region (UTR). As a result, translation of the target mRNA is inhibited and sometimes the mRNA itself can be de-stabilized. The inhibitory effects of miRNAs have been linked to many diverse cellular processes including malignant proliferation and apoptosis, development and differentiation, metabolic processes and neural plasticity. We asked whether endogenous fluctuations in a set of mRNA and miRNA profiles contain correlated changes that are statistically distinguishable from the many other fluctuations in the data set. Methodology/Principal Findings: Biopsies from 12 human primary brain tumors were used to extract RNA. These samples were used to determine genome-wide mRNA expression levels by microarray analysis and a miRNA profile by real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR). Correlation coefficients were determined for all possible mRNA-miRNA pairs and the distribution of these correlations compared to the random distribution. An excess of high positive and negative correlation pairs were observed at the tails of these distributions. Most of these highest correlation pairs do not contain sufficiently complementary sequences to predict a target relationship; nor do they lie in physical proximity to each other. However, by examining pairs in which the significance of the correlation coefficients is modestly relaxed, negative correlations do tend to predict targets and positive correlations do tend to predict physically proximate pairs. A subset of high correlation pairs were experimentally validated by over-expressing or suppressing a miRNA and measuring the correlated mRNAs. Conclusions/Significance: Sufficient information exists within a set of tumor samples to detect endogenous correlations between miRNA and mRNA levels. Based on the validations of the correlations the causal arrow for these correlations is likely to be directed from the miRNAs to the mRNAs. From these data sets, we inferred and validated a tumor suppression pathway linked to miR-181c. Keywords: cell type comparison

Project description:Background: microRNAs (miRNAs) are approximately 21 nucleotide non-coding transcripts capable of regulating gene expression. The most widely studied mechanism of regulation involves binding of the miRNA to a target mRNA, usually in its 3â untranslated region (UTR). As a result, translation of the target mRNA is inhibited and sometimes the mRNA itself can be de-stabilized. The inhibitory effects of miRNAs have been linked to many diverse cellular processes including malignant proliferation and apoptosis, development and differentiation, metabolic processes and neural plasticity. We asked whether endogenous fluctuations in a set of mRNA and miRNA profiles contain correlated changes that are statistically distinguishable from the many other fluctuations in the data set. Methodology/Principal Findings: Biopsies from 12 human primary brain tumors were used to extract RNA. These samples were used to determine genome-wide mRNA expression levels by microarray analysis and a miRNA profile by real-time reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR). Correlation coefficients were determined for all possible mRNA-miRNA pairs and the distribution of these correlations compared to the random distribution. An excess of high positive and negative correlation pairs were observed at the tails of these distributions. Most of these highest correlation pairs do not contain sufficiently complementary sequences to predict a target relationship; nor do they lie in physical proximity to each other. However, by examining pairs in which the significance of the correlation coefficients is modestly relaxed, negative correlations do tend to predict targets and positive correlations do tend to predict physically proximate pairs. A subset of high correlation pairs were experimentally validated by over-expressing or suppressing a miRNA and measuring the correlated mRNAs. Conclusions/Significance: Sufficient information exists within a set of tumor samples to detect endogenous correlations between miRNA and mRNA levels. Based on the validations of the correlations the causal arrow for these correlations is likely to be directed from the miRNAs to the mRNAs. From these data sets, we inferred and validated a tumor suppression pathway linked to miR-181c. Experiment Overall Design: Microarray data were obtained from the 12 tumors using Affymetrics HG-U133A array platforms. Tissue from glioma resections were obtained and collected at UCLA under approval from the Institutional Review Board. Categorization into high or low grade was based on the formal pathology report, with WHO grades III and IV being termed "high grade" and grades I and II termed "low grade". Histological diagnoses fell into the following categories: two low grade anaplastic mixed gliomas, one low grade oligodendroglioma, six high grade glioblastomas, two high grade gliosarcomas, and one high grade glioblastoma/gliosarcoma.

Project description:Single-cell analysis of the transcriptome deepens our understanding of an individual cell's contribution to its microenvironment. Using single-cell analysis to study complex biological processes requires state-of-the-art computational tools. Assessing similarity is highly important for bioinformatics algorithms in order to determine correlations between biological information. Similarity can appear by chance, particularly for low expressed entities. This is especially relevant in single cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) because the read counts obtained are lower compared to bulk RNA-sequencing and therefore classic bioinformatics tools are insufficient to obtain reproducible results. Recently, a Bayesian correlation scheme, that assigns low correlation values to correlations coming from low expressed genes, has been proposed to assess similarity for bulk RNA-seq and miRNA. This Bayesian method uses a prior distribution before using empirical evidence. Our goal was to extend the properties of this Bayesian correlation scheme to scRNA-seq data. We assessed 3 ways to compute similarity. First, we computed the similarity of each pair of genes over all cells. Second, we identified specific cell populations and computed the correlation in those specific cells. Third, we computed the similarity of each pair of genes over all clusters, by including the total mRNA expression in those cells. To study the effect of the number of cells on the method, we did not rely on simulated data, we generated 4 scRNA-seq mouse liver cell libraries with a varying number of input cells. Results: We show that Bayesian correlations are more reproducible than Pearson correlations in all the scenarios studied. Compared to Pearson correlations, Bayesian correlations have a smaller dependence on the number of input cells. We demonstrate that the Bayesian correlation algorithm assigns high similarity values to genes with a biological relevance in a specific population. Significance: Our results demonstrate that Bayesian correlation is a robust similarity measure for scRNA-seq datasets. The Bayesian method allows researchers to study similarity between pairs of genes without discarding low expressed entities and to minimize biasing the results by fake correlations. Taken together, using our method of Bayesian correlation the reproducibility of scRNA-seq experiments is increased significantly.

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Integrative Assessment of RNA-seq and IHC: Linking Tumor Biomarkers and Microenvironment

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