Identification of Pathways Involved in Paclitaxel Activity in Cervical Cancer

Paclitaxel is one of the key chemotherapeutic drugs widely used to treat various types of cancer. Many cervicalcancer patients exhibit selectivity in response to thereapy, however, which is considered to be correlated withdrug-gene-pathways. The aim of this study was to identify pathways involved in paclitaxel activity in cervicalcancer. Gene expression data was obtained from the NCBI Gene Expression Omnibus and the associationsbetween paclitaxel and genes from DrugBank, MATADOR, TTD, CTD and SuperTarget databases. Differentiallyexpressed genes in cervical cancer were identified using the significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) statisticaltechnique. Pathway analysis was performed according to the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG)database using the software package SubpathwayMiner to predict target genes of paclitaxel in cervical cancerand regulated pathways. We found that paclitaxel, which exhibits anticancer activity in cervical cancer, mayinteract with these differentially expressed genes and their corresponding signaling pathways. Our study presentsthe first in-depth, large-scale analysis of pathways involved in paclitaxel activity in cervical cancer. Interestingly,these pathways have not been reported to be involved in other tumors. Thus our findings may contribute to theunderstanding of the mechanisms underlying paclitaxel resistance in cervical cancer.