Transcriptomic profiling of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and normal control samples

To understand the genes and pathways that may potentially drive nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) pathogenesis, we sought out to analyze the transcriptomic data from the disease and control samples. We used RNA-sequencing based gene expression data to identify genes differentially expressed between NPC and normal controls and then characterize the gene ontology and pathways down- or up-regulated in the disease samples. Overall design: 7 NPC biopsy specimens and 4 normal nasopharyngeal mucosal specimens were sampled. Total RNA were extracted from these samples, and analyzed by RNA-sequencing.