A bioinformatics-based study on the Cisplatin-resistant lung cancer cells; what are the orchestrators of this phenom?

Lung cancer represents a significant global health issue and is among the central causes of mortality and morbidity around the world. Unfortunately, the majority of lung cancer patients acquire drug resistant to chemotherapy either intrinsically or acquired after Cisplatin treatment. It is indicated that increasing or decreasing the expression of particular genes can affect chemotherapeutic sensitivity or resistance. As a result, gaining a deeper knowledge of the changed expression of genes implicated in lung cancer drug resistance, as well as developing novel therapeutic techniques, are critical targets for continued advancement in lung cancer treatment. In the present study, we aimed to find key regulatory genes in the progression of Cisplatin resistance in A-549 lung cancer cells. In this regard, microarray dataset of Cisplatin-resistant and Cisplatin-sensitive was retrieved from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) with accession number of GSE108214. Then, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between sensitive and resistant lung cancer cells were obtained by using R software v4.0.2 and related packages. We recognized CEACAM1, DGKA, ARHGEF4, and THSD4 are involved in the drug resistance. Experimentally, Cisplatin-resistant A-549 cells were developed and analyzed by MTT assay. Besides, the expression of candidate genes were analyzed in these cells compared to Cisplatin-sensitive A-549 cells by qRT-PCR. The findings presented that the expression of CEACAM1, DGKA, ARHGEF4, and THSD4 was altered following the induction of Cisplatin resistance in A549 cells.