Genome-wide identification of cancer/testis genes and their association with prognosis in a pan-cancer analysis

// Vandeclecio Lira da Silva 1, 2, 3, * , André Faustino Fonseca 1, 2, 3, * , Marbella Fonseca 1 , Thayna Emilia da Silva 1 , Ana Carolina Coelho 1, 3 , José Eduardo Kroll 1, 3, 4 , Jorge Estefano Santana de Souza 3, 5 , Beatriz Stransky 3, 6 Gustavo Antonio de Souza 1,3 and Sandro José de Souza 1, 3 1 Instituto do Cérebro, UFRN, Natal, Brazil 2 Ph.D. Program in Bioinformatics, UFRN, Natal, Brazil 3 Bioinformatics Multidisciplinary Environment (BioME), Digital Metropolis Institute, UFRN, Natal, Brazil 4 Instituto de Bioinformática e Biotecnologia, Natal, Brazil 5 Instituto Metrópole Digital, UFRN, Natal, Brazil 6 Departmento de Engenharia Biomédica, UFRN, Natal, Brazil * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Sandro José de Souza, email: sandro@neuro.ufrn.br Keywords: cancer/testis, cancer antigens, biomarkers, prognosis Received: June 03, 2017 Accepted: August 17, 2017 Published: October 10, 2017 ABSTRACT Cancer/testis (CT) genes are excellent candidates for cancer immunotherapies because of their restrict expression in normal tissues and the capacity to elicit an immune response when expressed in tumor cells. In this study, we provide a genome-wide screen for CT genes with the identification of 745 putative CT genes. Comparison with a set of known CT genes shows that 201 new CT genes were identified. Integration of gene expression and clinical data led us to identify dozens of CT genes associated with either good or poor prognosis. For the CT genes related to good prognosis, we show that there is a direct relationship between CT gene expression and a signal for CD8+ cells infiltration for some tumor types, especially melanoma.