Germ cell / Cancer (GC) genes or antigens entail a subset of genes highly expressed in cancer, but whose expression is normally restricted to germline cells. The germline includes primordial germ cells, which are the embryonic precursors of germ stem cells, and only exist in the early embryo. In our study, we aim to provide a selection of genes that are unique to the germline and cancer. Because of the restricted expression in physiological conditions, these genes are attractive candidates for diagnostic and therapeutic approaches. This web-app aims to facilitate identification of such potentially therapeutically relevant genes.
In particular, the graphs visualize the distributions of gene expressions in human primordial germ cells (hPGCs), primordial germ cell-like (PGC-like) cells, healthy somatic tissues (taken from GTEx database), and cancer cells (taken from TCGA database).
You can change the selection criteria by dragging the handles in each graph, or by manually setting numerical values below each graph. Upon changing the selection criteria, the set of genes that satisfy the new criteria is re-computed. The Venn diagram below visualizes the extent to which this current selection overlaps with previous studies that attempted to obtain similar selections with adult germ cells (Bruggeman et al. 2018) and whole testis tissue (Almeida et al. 2009 & Wang et al. 2016). The altered selection can be downloaded for further research.
The
current selection
is the set of genes that are currently selected in the
(Human PGC
PGC-like cell
histogram)
and the
GTEx
histogram and the
TCGA
histogram