Investigation of Hepatocellular Carcinoma Molecular Mechanisms via in Silico Analyses

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common cause of cancer-related death in the world. The molecular changes in the organism during the development of HCC are not fully understood. The aim of the present study is to contribute to the identification of critical genes and pathways associated with HCC via integrating various bioinformatics methods. In this study, experiments were conducted on gene expression data of 14 HCC tissues and noncancerous control tissues. A total of 1229 genes, which show a statistically significant change between the groups, were identified. Among these, 681 genes were upregulated and 548 genes were downregulated. Via mapping the detected genes into protein protein interaction networks, active subnetwork search, subnetwork topological analysis and functional enrichment analyses were carried out. The interactions between the molecular pathways affected by HCC were also presented.