Abstract: Objective To search for differential genes in cancerous tissues of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) based on TCGA database. Methods We search the differential genes in patients with HCC from TCGA database, and draw the survival curve according to the levels of differential genes by using fdr=0.05 and lgFC=1 as the screening basis. Results We successfully got the clinical and pathological materials of 374 cancerous tissues and 50 adjacent non-cancerous tissues from the TCGA-LIHC database; the total survival in patients with high risk was significantly lower than that in patients with low risk; we found the significant higher levels DNTM1, PRIM1 and UCK2 genes to screen and verify in TCGA database, and the results showed that many abundant signaling pathway, suggesting that DNTM1, PRIM1 and UCK2 were related to the survival of patients with HCC. Conclusion The UCK2, PRIM1 and DNTM1 genes are up-regulated and CYP2C9 gene is down-regulated in liver cancerous tissues by through TCGA database screening and verification, which might help the clinicians to deal with them in clinical practice.

Key words: Hepatocellular carcinoma, TCGA database, Differential genes, Cox regression model, UCK2, PRIM1, DNTM1