A Research of the Predictive Values of E2F Factors in Colorectal Cancer

Background: E2F family of transcription factors are related to cell cycle and apoptosis with activate or repress function on human cancer. Their critical role in colorectal cancer (CRC), including colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) and rectum adenocarcinoma (READ), were widely investigated with contradictory and ambiguous results. Methods: In this study, we explored the expressions of these eight E2F genes and their predictive values on the overall survive (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in CRC patients by means of bioinformatic databases, such as ONCOMINE, GEPIA, DAVIA and cBioPortal.Results: We found that the transcriptional levels of E2F1/2/3/5/7/8 were significantly higher in CRC patients than that in normal samples, while the E2F4/6 showed no significantly difference from GEPIA database. The transcriptional levels of all eight E2F factors showed no correlation with four tumor stages, except for the E2F3 is significantly varied in COAD patients. Survival analysis based on GEPIA database indicated that lower E2F3 and E2F4 mRNA expressions were significantly associated with the OS of the COAD patients.Conclusions: This study manifested that the E2F1/2/3/5/7/8 are potential biomarkers of CRC patients, and E2F3 could be used as the predictive factor of tumor stage in COAD patients. E2F3 and E2F4 might be the prognostic markers for COAD patients.