Gene Expression Analysis Identifies Novel Targets for Cervical Cancer Therapy

Although there has been significant progress in prevention and treatment of cervical cancer, this malignancy is still a leading cause of cancer death for women. Anti-angiogenesis and immunotherapy approaches have been providing survival benefits, however, response rates and durability of response need to be improved. There is a clear need for combination therapies that increase effectiveness of these agents and further improve patient outcome. Previous studies have largely focused on gene expression and molecular pathways in untreated cervix cancer. The goal of this study was to evaluate cancer-specific molecular pathways and their correlation with tumor immune profile in recurrent cervical cancer. Tumor and adjacent normal tissues were used to identify potential combination therapy targets. We found that DNA damage repair pathway genes were significantly overexpressed in the tumor. Based on our results and other recent investigations, we suggest that combination immune checkpoint and PARP inhibitor therapy is a high priority consideration for patients with recurrent, previously treated cervical cancer. We also show that multiple epithelial-mesenchymal transition-related genes, including MAP2K4, ID2, JAK1, FGF2, PIK3R1, AKT3, FGF13, and STAT3 may be potential targets. Interestingly, high-throughput analysis of Cancer Genome Atlas data identified distinct targets, including Fatty acid synthase FASN and Matrix Metallopeptidase 1 MMP1 as novel, promising combination therapy partners.