HMGCR and cancer: To further characterize these pathways, validation of the RNA-sequencing results was conducted with genes relevant to the G2/M checkpoint pathway (i.e., AURKB, HMGCR, and SQLE) and E2F target pathway (i.e., AURKB and IQGAP), either from the Cancer Hallmark or Curated gene sets associated with those pathways.