Functional transcriptomic annotation and protein–protein interaction analysis identify EZH2 and UBE2C as key upregulated proteins in ovarian cancer

© 2018 The Authors.Although early stage ovarian cancer is in most cases a curable disease, some patients relapse even with appropriate adjuvant treatment. Therefore, the identification of patient and tumor characteristics to better stratify risk and guide rational drug development is desirable. Using transcriptomic functional annotation followed by protein–protein interacting (PPI) network analyses, we identified functions that were upregulated and associated with detrimental outcome in patients with early stage ovarian cancer. Some of the identified functions included cell cycle, cell division, signal transduction/protein modification, cellular response to extracellular stimuli or transcription regulation, among others. Genes within these functions included AURKA, AURKB, CDK1, BIRC5, or CHEK1 among others. Of note, the histone-lysine N-methyltransferase (EZH2) and the ubiquitin-conjugating enzyme E2C (UBE2C) genes were found to be upregulated and amplified in 10% and 6% of tumors, respectively. Of note, EZH2 and UBE2C were identified as principal interacting proteins of druggable networks. In conclusion, we describe a set of genes overexpressed in ovarian cancer with potential for therapeutic intervention including EZH2 and UBE2C.This work has been funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III (PI16/01121), Diputación de Albacete and CRIS Cancer Foundation (to AO) and the framework agreement between University of Castilla-La Mancha and Albacete Provincial Council (UCLM-Excma. Diputación de Albacete) in support to research activity (to EMGM). We would like to also thanks to the cancer associations AMUMA and ACEPAIN for supporting part of this work. EMGM is funded by the implementation research program of the UCLM (UCLM resolution date: 31/07/2014), with a contract for accessing the Spanish System of Science, Technology and Innovation-Secti (cofunded by the European Commission/FSE funds)