Bladder cancer stage-associated hub genes revealed by WGCNA co-expression network analysis.

Background: Bladder cancer was a malignant disease in patients, our research aimed at discovering the possible biomarkers for the diseases.

Results: The gene chip GSE31684, including 93samples, was downloaded from the GEO datasets and co-expression network was constructed by the data. Molecular complex detection(MCODE) was used to identify hub genes. The most significant cluster including 16 genes: CDH11 , COL3A1 , COL6A3 , COL5A1 , AEBP1 , COL1A2 , NTM , COL11A1 , THBS2 , COL8A1 , COL1A1 , BGN , MMP2 , PXDN , THY1 , and TGFB1I1 was identified. After annotated by BiNGO, they were suggested associated with collagen fibril organization and blood vessel development. In addition, the Kaplan Meier curves were obtained by UALCAN. The high expression of THY1 , AEBP1 , CDH11 , COL1A1 , COL1A2 , COL11A1 , MMP2 , PXDN , BGN , COL5A1, COL8A1 , and TGFB1I1 indicated poor prognosis of the patients( P  < 0.05). Finally, we examined genes' expression between low and high tumor stage by the Wilcoxon test(P < 0.05), TGFB1I1 was excluded.

Conclusion: THY1, AEBP1, CDH11, COL1A1, COL1A2, COL11A1, MMP2, PXDN, BGN, COL5A1, COL8A1 associated with the tumor stage as well as tumor patients' prognosis . COL5A1, COL8A1 ( P  < 0.01) may serve as therapeutic targets for the disease.