scholarly journals Exploration and validation of a novel prognostic signature based on comprehensive bioinformatics analysis in hepatocellular carcinoma

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaofei Wang ◽  
Jie Qiao ◽  
Rongqi Wang

Abstract The present study aimed to construct a novel signature for indicating the prognostic outcomes of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Gene expression profiles were downloaded from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) databases. The prognosis-related genes with differential expression were identified with weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA), univariate analysis, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). With the stepwise regression analysis, a risk score was constructed based on the expression levels of five genes: Risk score = (−0.7736* CCNB2) + (1.0083* DYNC1LI1) + (−0.6755* KIF11) + (0.9588* SPC25) + (1.5237* KIF18A), which can be applied as a signature for predicting the prognosis of HCC patients. The prediction capacity of the risk score for overall survival was validated with both TCGA and ICGC cohorts. The 1-, 3- and 5-year ROC curves were plotted, in which the AUC was 0.842, 0.726 and 0.699 in TCGA cohort and 0.734, 0.691 and 0.700 in ICGC cohort, respectively. Moreover, the expression levels of the five genes were determined in clinical tumor and normal specimens with immunohistochemistry. The novel signature has exhibited good prediction efficacy for the overall survival of HCC patients.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guanbao Zhou ◽  
Genjie Lu ◽  
Liang Yang ◽  
Yangfang Lu

Abstract Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of liver cancer with relatively poor prognosis. Thus, we aimed to identify novel molecular biomarkers to effectively predict the prognosis of HCC patients and eventually guide treatment. Methods: Prognosis-associated genes were determined by Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression analyses using the expression and clinical data of 373 HCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and validated in an independent Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset. The classification of AML was performed by unsupervised hierarchical clustering of ten gene expression levels. A prognostic risk score was established based on a linear combination of ten gene expression levels using the regression coefficients derived from the multivariate Cox regression models. Results: A total of 183 genes were significantly associated with prognosis in HCC. SLC25A15, RAB8A, GOT2, SORBS2, IL18RAP were top five protective genes, while FHL3, AMD1, DCAF13, UBE2E1, PTDSS2 were top five risk genes in HCC. SLC25A15, GOT2, IL18RAP were significantly down-regulated and DCAF13, PTDSS2 and SORBS2 were significantly up-regulated in the HCC samples and these genes exhibited high accuracy in differentiating HCC tissues from normal liver tissues. Hierarchical clustering analysis of the ten genes discovered three clusters of HCC patients. HCC tumors of cluster1 and 2 were significantly associated with more favourable OS than those of cluster3, cluster2 tumors showed higher pathologic stage than cluster3 tumors. The risk score was predictive of increased mortality rate in HCC patients. Conclusions: The ten-gene signature and the risk score may turn out to be novel molecular biomarkers and stratification of HCC patients to considerably ameliorate the prognostic prediction.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lianmei Wang ◽  
Jing Liu ◽  
Zhong Xian ◽  
Jingzhuo Tian ◽  
Chunying Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is associated with poor 5-year survival. Chronic infection with hepatitis B virus (HBV) contributes to ~ 50% of HCC cases. Establishment of a prognostic model is pivotal for clinical therapy of HBV-related HCC (HBV–HCC). We downloaded gene-expression profiles from Gene expression omnibus (GEO) datasets with HBV-HCC patients and the corresponding controls. Integration of these differentially expressed genes (DEGs) was achieved with the Robustrankaggreg (RRA) method. DEGs functional analyses and pathway analyses was performed using the Gene ontology (GO) database, and the Kyoto encyclopedia of genes and genomes (KEGG) database respectively. DNA topoisomerase II alpha (TOP2A), Disks large-associated protein 5 (DLGAP5), RAD51 associated protein 1 (RAD51AP1), ZW10 interactor (ZWINT), BUB1 mitotic checkpoint serine/threonine kinase B (BUB1B), Cyclin B1 (CCNB1), Forkhead box M1 (FOXM1), Cyclin B2 (CCNB2), Aurora kinase A (AURKA), and Cyclin-dependent kinase 1 (CDK1) were identified as the top-ten hub genes. These hub-genes were verified by the Liver cancer-riken, JP project from international cancer genome consortium (ICGC-LIRI-JP) project, The Cancer genome atlas (TCGA) HCC cohort, and Human protein profiles dataset. FOXM1 and CDK1 were found to be prognostic-related molecules for HBV-HCC patients. The expression patterns of FOXM1 and CDK1were consistently in human and mouse. Furthermore, a nomogram model based on histology grade, pathology stage, sex and, expression of FOXM1 and CDK1 was built to predict the prognosis for HBV–HCC patients. The nomogram model could be used to predict the prognosis of HBV-HCC cases.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linfeng Xu ◽  
Xingxing Jian ◽  
Zhenhao Liu ◽  
Jingjing Zhao ◽  
Siwen Zhang ◽  
...  

Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver malignancy with high morbidity and mortality worldwide. Tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) plays a pivotal role in the outcome and treatment of HCC. However, the effect of immune cell signatures (ICSs) representing the characteristics of TIME on the prognosis and therapeutic benefit of HCC patients remains to be further studied.Materials and methods: In total, the gene expression profiles of 1,447 HCC patients from several databases, i.e., The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), International Cancer Genome Consortium, and Gene Expression Omnibus, were obtained and applied. Based on a comprehensive collection of marker genes, 182 ICSs were evaluated by single sample gene set enrichment analysis. Then, by performing univariate and multivariate Cox analysis and random forest modeling, four significant signatures were selected to fit an immune cell signature score (ICSscore).Results: In this study, an ICSscore-based prognostic model was constructed to stratify HCC patients into high-risk and low-risk groups in the TCGA-LIHC cohort, which was successfully validated in two independent cohorts. Moreover, the ICSscore values were found to positively correlate with the current American Joint Committee on Cancer staging system, indicating that ICSscore could act as a comparable biomarker for HCC risk stratification. In addition, when setting the four ICSs and ICSscores as features, the classifiers can significantly distinguish treatment-responding and non-responding samples in HCC. Also, in melanoma and breast cancer, the unified ICSscore could verify samples with therapeutic benefits.Conclusion: Overall, we simplified the tedious ICS to develop the ICSscore, which can be applied successfully for prognostic stratification and therapeutic evaluation in HCC. This study provides an insight into the therapeutic predictive efficacy of prognostic ICS, and a novel ICSscore was constructed to allow future expanded application.


Author(s):  
Ze-Bing Song ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Guo-Pei Zhang ◽  
Shao-Qiang Li

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the major cancer-related deaths worldwide. Genomic instability is correlated with the prognosis of cancers. A biomarker associated with genomic instability might be effective to predict the prognosis of HCC. In the present study, data of HCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) databases were used. A total of 370 HCC patients from the TCGA database were randomly classified into a training set and a test set. A prognostic signature of the training set based on nine overall survival (OS)–related genomic instability–derived genes (SLCO2A1, RPS6KA2, EPHB6, SLC2A5, PDZD4, CST2, MARVELD1, MAGEA6, and SEMA6A) was constructed, which was validated in the test and TCGA and ICGC sets. This prognostic signature showed more accurate prediction for prognosis of HCC compared with tumor grade, pathological stage, and four published signatures. Cox multivariate analysis revealed that the risk score could be an independent prognostic factor of HCC. A nomogram that combines pathological stage and risk score performed well compared with an ideal model. Ultimately, paired differential expression profiles of genes in the prognostic signature were validated at mRNA and protein level using HCC and paratumor tissues obtained from our institute. Taken together, we constructed and validated a genomic instability–derived gene prognostic signature, which can help to predict the OS of HCC and help us to explore the potential therapeutic targets of HCC.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiliang Lu ◽  
linjun hu ◽  
zhi zeng ◽  
zunqiang xiao ◽  
yuyang wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Metabolic reprogramming has been proven to be a hallmark of cancer. The pathogenic factors involved in Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) lead to an abnormal lipid metabolism that facilitates the malignant transformation of liver cells . However, the association between lipid metabolism and the prognosis of HCC has not been systematically delineated. In this study, the training set comprised 221 patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) based on the gene expression details, whereas 230 patients within the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) comprised the validation set. Ten lipid metabolism-related risk genes were screened; they were found to be significantly related to the prognosis of HCC. The risk score was calculated based on ten screened lipid metabolism-related risk genes and was confirmed to be an independent prognostic factor for HCC even when excluding clinical features. Therefore, a novel nomogram integrating the risk score and other proven clinical attributes was constructed. The results of the area under the receiver operating characteristics curve (AUC), C index, and calibration plot supported the better predictive capacity of the nomogram over others. Treatment with metformin significantly positively affected the expression of four out of ten genes; this was beneficial to longer overall survival. The results provide a new insight into accurate prognostic prediction, as well as understanding the carcinogenesis and process of HCC .


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Junyu Huo ◽  
Yunjin Zang ◽  
Hongjing Dong ◽  
Xiaoqiang Liu ◽  
Fu He ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: In recent years, the relationship between tumor associated macrophages (TAMs) and solid tumors has become a research hotspot. The study aims at exploring the close relationship of TAMs with metabolic reprogramming genes in hepatocellular carcinoma(HCC), in order to provide a new way of treatment for HCC.Materials and methods: The study selected 343 HCC patients with complete survival information(survival time >= 1month) in the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) as the study objects. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis assisted in figuring out the relationship between macrophage infiltration level and overall survival (OS), and Pearson correlation test to identify metabolic reprogramming genes(MRGs) related to tumor macrophage abundance. Lasso regression algorithm were conducted on prognosis related MRGs screened by Univariate Cox regression analysis and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis to construct the riskscore, another independent cohort (including 228 HCC patients) from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) were used for external validation regarding the prognostic signature.Results: A risk score composed of 8 metabolic genes can accurately predict the OS of training cohort(TCGA) and testing cohort(ICGC). It is important that the risk score could widely used for people with different clinical characteristics, and is an independent predictor independent of other clinical factors affecting prognosis. As expected, high-risk group exhibited an obviously higher macrophage abundance relative to low-risk group, and the risk score presented a positive relation to the expression level of three commonly used immune checkpoints(PD1,PDL1,CTLA4).Conclusion: Our study constructed and validated a novel eight‑gene signature for predicting HCC patients’ OS, which possibly contributed to making clinical treatment decisions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Zhang ◽  
Chen Chen ◽  
Qi Li ◽  
Jialu Fu ◽  
Dong Zhang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Immune-related genes (IRGs) play a crucial role in the initiation and progression of cholangiocarcinoma (CCA). However, immune signatures have rarely been used to predict prognosis of CCA. The aim of this study was to construct a novel model for CCA to predict survival based on IRGs expression data.Methods: The gene expression profiles and clinical data of CCA patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database were integrated to establish and validate prognostic IRG signatures. Differentially expressed immune-related genes were screened. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis were performed to identify prognostic IRGs, and the risk model that predicts outcomes was constructed. Furthermore, receiver operating characteristic (ROC) and Kaplan-Meier curve were plotted to examine predictive accuracy of the model, and a nomogram was constructed based on IRGs signature, combining with other clinical characteristics. Finally, CIBERSORT was used to analyze the association of immune cells infiltration with risk score.Results: We identified that 223 IRGs were significantly dysregulated in patients with CCA, among which five IRGs (AVPR1B, CST4, TDGF1, RAET1E and IL9R) were identified as robust indicators for overall survival (OS), and a prognostic model was built based on the IRGs signature. Meanwhile, patients with high risk had worse OS in training and validation cohort, and the area under the ROC was 0.898 and 0.846, respectively. Nomogram demonstrated that immune risk score contributed much more points than other clinicopathological variables, with a C-index of 0.819 (95% CI, 0.727-0.911). Finally, we found that IRGs signature was positively correlated with the proportion of CD8+ T cells, neurophils and T gamma delta, while negatively with that of CD4+ memory resting T cells.Conclusions: We established and validated an effective five IRGs-based prediction model for CCA, which could accurately classify patients into groups with low and high risk of poor prognosis.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Xin Zhao ◽  
Jiaxuan Zou ◽  
Ziwei Wang ◽  
Ge Li ◽  
Yi Lei

Background. Gastric cancer (GC) is believed to be one of the most common digestive tract malignant tumors. The prognosis of GC remains poor due to its high malignancy, high incidence of metastasis and relapse, and lack of effective treatment. The constant progress in bioinformatics and molecular biology techniques has given rise to the discovery of biomarkers with clinical value to predict the GC patients’ prognosis. However, the use of a single gene biomarker can hardly achieve the satisfactory specificity and sensitivity. Therefore, it is urgent to identify novel genetic markers to forecast the prognosis of patients with GC. Materials and Methods. In our research, data mining was applied to perform expression profile analysis of mRNAs in the 443 GC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort. Genes associated with the overall survival (OS) of GC were identified using univariate analysis. The prognostic predictive value of the risk factors was determined using the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and multivariate analysis. The risk scoring system was built in TCGA dataset and validated in an independent Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) dataset comprising 300 GC patients. Based on the median of the risk score, GC patients were grouped into high-risk and low-risk groups. Results. We identified four genes (GMPPA, GPC3, NUP50, and VCAN) that were significantly correlated with GC patients’ OS. The high-risk group showed poor prognosis, indicating that the risk score was an effective predictor for the prognosis of GC patients. Conclusion. The signature consisting of four glycolysis-related genes could be used to forecast the GC patients’ prognosis.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Jun Liu ◽  
Jianjun Lu ◽  
Zhanzhong Ma ◽  
Wenli Li

Background. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common cancer with an extremely high mortality rate. Therefore, there is an urgent need in screening key biomarkers of HCC to predict the prognosis and develop more individual treatments. Recently, AATF is reported to be an important factor contributing to HCC. Methods. We aimed to establish a gene signature to predict overall survival of HCC patients. Firstly, we examined the expression level of AATF in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the International Union of Cancer Genome (ICGC) databases. Genes coexpressed with AATF were identified in the TCGA dataset by the Poisson correlation coefficient and used to establish a gene signature for survival prediction. The prognostic significance of this gene signature was then validated in the ICGC dataset and used to build a combined prognostic model for clinical practice. Results. Gene expression data and clinical information of 2521 HCC patients were downloaded from three public databases. AATF expression in HCC tissue was higher than that in matched normal liver tissues. 644 genes coexpressed with AATF were identified by the Poisson correlation coefficient and used to establish a three-gene signature (KIF20A, UCK2, and SLC41A3) by the univariate and multivariate least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression analyses. This three-gene signature was then used to build a combined nomogram for clinical practice. Conclusion. This integrated nomogram based on the three-gene signature can predict overall survival for HCC patients well. The three-gene signature may be a potential therapeutic target in HCC.


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