Integrated analysis reveals down-regulation of SPARCL1 is correlated with cervical cancer development and progression

Cervical cancer is the fourth most common malignancy among women worldwide, and continued research to discover biomarkers or therapeutic targets will aid early diagnosis and treatment of this cancer. Here, we investigated novel cervical cancer biomarkers using integrated analysis of high-throughput sequencing data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. We have identified nine genes of interest that appear to be involved in cervical cancer development: SPARCL1, SYCP2, KIF4A, PRC1, TOP2A, LAMP3, KIF20A, MCM2, and APOBEC3B. Furthermore, gene ontology (GO) and co-expression analysis of these differentially expressed genes indicated that SPARCL1 may play a core role in cervical cancer development. Further, we analyzed the expression of these nine genes during the progression of cervical cancer, and found that SPARCL1 is also related to precancerous lesions and migration processes during cervical cancer pathogenesis. Finally, we validated these observations by investigating SPARCL1 expression in cervical cancer tissue and serum samples. The diagnostic specificity of serum SPARCL1 in cervical cancer occurrence was also compared with other high incidence diseases. All of these data indicate that SPARCL1 may be a novel cancer predictive marker and a potential therapeutic target for tumor development and progression in cervical cancer.