RNA sequencing identifies RNA Splicing and regulation of mitotic cell cycle gene ontology terms differentially expressed in etoposide treated human adenocarcinoma cells.

Etoposide treatment in chemotherapy is used in almost every cancer type in an effort to combat a disease that affects millions of people worldwide. Etoposide is a DNA damaging agent that induces cell cycle arrest and causes significant double strand breaks which eventually leads to cell death in cancer cells. However, its affects vary by cell type and currently there is not enough knowledge on these varying. Here, we perform RNA sequencing on etoposide treated human colorectal cancer cells (DLD-1 cells), identify the top five gene ontology (GO) groups that are differentially expressed in response to this treatment, and compare these results to etoposide treated a549 cancer cells dataset. Our results indicate that two GO terms, RNA splicing and regulation of mitotic cell cycle, are differentially expressed only in DLD-1 cells. Cell Proliferation was identified as a top 10 GO term differentially expressed in both cell lines. These GO terms can be used to evaluate the cellular pathways that are affected by etoposide, study if these affects are consistent across other cancer cell lines. Potentially, leading to effective treatments against cancer using etoposide or other therapeutic drugs.