Circadian sleep/wake cycle

Across TCGA pan-cancer cohorts, RNA activity of the Circadian sleep/wake cycle pathway differs between tumor and matched normal tissue in 15 of the 18 cancer types tested.

The strongest signal is observed in kidney chromophobe (KICH), where pathway activity is higher in tumor tissue than in matched normal tissue. In most cancer types, this pathway shows higher activity in tumors, although a few cancer types, such as HNSC and BLCA, show the opposite pattern, with lower activity in tumor tissue.

KICH, THCA, and KIRC show the most reproducible tumor–normal differences in pathway activity.

Tumor vs normal pathway activity by lineage

Ranked by sampling consensus. Activity change represents the tumor-versus-normal difference in pathway activity on a log₂ scale. Positive values indicate higher pathway activity in tumor tissue. The reported p-values are derived from the corresponding differential activity tests.

Lineage	Gender	Stage	Activity change	p	Sampling consensus
KICH	All	III,IV	+0.128	<.001	11	view →
THCA	Male	III,IV	+0.112	<.001	9	view →
KIRC	All	II,III,IV	+0.051	<.001	9	view →
HNSC	Male	All	−0.066	<.001	8	view →
BLCA	Female	All	−0.098	<.001	7	view →
LUSC	Female	All	−0.092	<.001	6	view →
BRCA	Female	All	+0.023	.002	6	view →
UCEC	All	All	−0.053	.002	4	view →
ESCA	All	All	−0.090	.004	2	view →
PRAD	All	All	+0.067	<.001	2	view →
LUAD	Male	II,III,IV	−0.063	.020	2	view →
KIRP	All	All	+0.041	.012	2	view →

Pink = more active in tumor, green = less active in tumor. Showing the 12 strongest of 15 lineages.

GO:0042745–KICH

Open the KICH breakdown →