Cancer Cell Invasion: A Computational Interrogation of Myosin Proteins in Glioblastoma
Glioblastoma (GBM) is a highly aggressive brain cancer with an expected 5% 5-year survival rate. Cancer results from dysregulation of gene expression that causes increased cell division and metastasis driven by the cytoskeleton and myosin motor proteins. While tissue invasion can be inhibited, we must first understand the key proteins involved in cancer invasion. We analyzed datasets—sourced from CPTAC and originally used to characterize the molecular pathogenesis of GBM for treatment development—that included proteome, PTM, and mRNA seq myosin data for normal tissue samples and samples of each GBM subtype. I used R Studio version 1.4 to organize myosin protein datasets for analysis with the Perseus proteomics data analysis platform. ANOVA analysis and post hoc Tukey’s Test were performed on each myosin protein, and heat maps were generated to visualize relative abundances. The preliminary analysis reveals an upregulation of Myo10 in the Classical subtype and an upregulation of Myo1C in the highly invasive Mesenchymal subtype. We are currently analyzing the presence of post-translational modification and RNA-seq abundances for comparison with proteome abundances. These results reveal potential targets for future studies into GBM invasion that will provide more insight into how myosins impact cancer progression.