Transforming RNA-Seq gene expression to track cancer progression in the multi-stage early to advanced-stage cancer development

Abstract

Cancer progression can be tracked by gene expression changes that occur throughout early-stage to advanced-stage cancer development. The accumulated genetic changes can be detected when gene expression levels in advanced-stage are less variable but show high variability in early-stage. Normalizing advanced-stage expression samples with earlystage and clustering of the normalized expression samples can reveal cancers with similar or different progression and provide insight into clinical and phenotypic patterns of patient samples within the same cancer.