最近的研究揭示了神经功能可能涉及癌症发展的各个方面，作为连接微环境应激、细胞内亚系统活动和细胞生存的桥梁。揭示神经系统扮演的功能角色可以提供系统级了解癌症生物学的缺失环节。然而，现有信息高度碎片化，分散在文献和互联网数据库中，使癌症研究人员难以使用。我们对TCGA癌症组织和GTEx健康器官组织的转录组数据进行计算分析，旨在展示神经基因的功能角色可以如何推导以及它们与不同阶段的26种癌症类型的非神经功能相关联。做出了几个新发现，包括：i） 特定神经基因的表达能够预测癌症患者的预后；ii）癌症转移往往涉及特定的神经功能；iii）低生存率的癌症涉及更多神经相互作用，而高生存率的癌症则涉及更少；iv）更恶性的癌症涉及更复杂的神经功能；和v）神经功能可能被诱导起来缓解压力并帮助相关癌细胞生存。开发了一个名为NGC的数据库，用于组织这些推导的神经功能和相关性，以及从公共数据库收集的基因表达和功能注释，旨在提供一个集成的公开信息资源，使癌症研究人员能够充分利用其研究中的相关信息，并通过NGC提供的工具进行方便研究。版权 © 2023 Tan，Wang，Zhou，Huang，An和Xu。

Recent studies have revealed that neural functions are involved in possibly every aspect of a cancer development, serving as bridges connecting microenvironmental stressors, activities of intracellular subsystems, and cell survival. Elucidation of the functional roles played by the neural system could provide the missing links in developing a systems-level understanding of cancer biology. However, the existing information is highly fragmented and scattered across the literature and internet databases, making it difficult for cancer researchers to use. We have conducted computational analyses of transcriptomic data of cancer tissues in TCGA and tissues of healthy organs in GTEx, aiming to demonstrate how the functional roles by the neural genes could be derived and what non-neural functions they are associated with, across different stages of 26 cancer types. Several novel discoveries are made, including i) the expressions of certain neural genes can predict the prognosis of a cancer patient; ii) cancer metastasis tends to involve specific neural functions; iii) cancers of low survival rates involve more neural interactions than those with high survival rates; iv) more malignant cancers involve more complex neural functions; and v) neural functions are probably induced to alleviate stresses and help the associated cancer cells to survive. A database, called NGC, is developed for organizing such derived neural functions and associations, along with gene expressions and functional annotations collected from public databases, aiming to provide an integrated and publicly available information resource to enable cancer researchers to take full advantage of the relevant information in their research, facilitated by tools provided by NGC.Copyright © 2023 Tan, Wang, Zhou, Huang, An and Xu.