Identification of significant genes signatures and prognostic biomarkers in cervical squamous carcinoma via bioinformatic data

Cervical squamous cancer (CESC) is an intractable gynecological malignancy because of its high mortality rate and difficulty in early diagnosis. Several biomarkers have been found to predict the prognose of CESC using bioinformatics methods, but they still lack clinical effectiveness. Most of the existing bioinformatic studies only focus on the changes of oncogenes but neglect the differences on the protein level and molecular biology validation are rarely conducted. Gene set data from the NCBI-GEO database were used in this study to compare the differences of gene and protein levels between normal and cancer tissues through significant pathway selection and core gene signature analysis to screen potential clinical biomarkers of CESC. Subsequently, the molecular and protein levels of clinical samples were verified by quantitative transcription PCR, western blot and immunohistochemistry. Three differentially expressed genes (RFC4, MCM2, TOP2A) were found to have a significant survival (