Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the main form of malignant liver cancer with poor survival. Although some critical driver aberrations were identified in HCC, neither the transcriptomic nor the clinical associations of many of these driver genes have been well-characterized. We used the state of art driver detection methods MutSigCV and OncodriveFM to identify 11 consensus driver genes across six HCC cohorts and 1,494 samples in total. The consensus driver genes include TP53, CTNNB1, ALB, AXIN1, RB1, ARID1A, RPS6KA3, ACVR2A, NFE2L2, CDKN2A and HNF1A. Integrative analysis of driver mutations, copy number variations and transcriptomic data reveals that these driver genes are associated with the majority (63%) of the mRNA transcriptome, but only a small fraction (9%) of miRNAs. Genes associated with TP53, CTNNB1, ARID1A and HNF1A mutations contribute to four most densely connected clusters of biological pathways. Phenotypically, these driver genes are significantly associated with patients’ overall survival. Some of these driver genes are significantly associated with gender (TP53, CTNNB1, ALB), grade (TP53, ALB, RB1) and age (CTNNB1, AXIN1, RB1) in multiple cohorts. In summary, this study reveals the vast impacts of driver gene mutations (genotype) in HCC phenotypes, which may be valuable therapeutic targets of HCC.
Footnotes
KC: kchaudhary{at}cc.hawaii.edu, LL: liangqunlu{at}gmail.com, TC: tching{at}cc.hawaii.edu, OBP: o.poirion{at}gmail.com, LXG: lgarmire{at}cc.hawaii.edu