scholarly journals Prognostic Score-based Clinical Factors and Metabolism-related Biomarkers for Predicting the Progression of Hepatocellular Carcinoma

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 117693432095157
Author(s):  
Jia Yan ◽  
Ming Shu ◽  
Xiang Li ◽  
Hua Yu ◽  
Shuhuai Chen ◽  
...  

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common malignant tumor representing more than 90% of primary liver cancer. This study aimed to identify metabolism-related biomarkers with prognostic value by developing the novel prognostic score (PS) model. Transcriptomic profiles derived from TCGA and EBIArray databases were analyzed to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in HCC tumor samples compared with normal samples. The overlapped genes between DEGs and metabolism-related genes (crucial genes) were screened and functionally analyzed. A novel PS model was constructed to identify optimal signature genes. Cox regression analysis was performed to identify independent clinical factors related to prognosis. Nomogram model was constructed to estimate the predictability of clinical factors. Finally, protein expression of crucial genes was explored in different cancer tissues and cell types from the Human Protein Atlas (HPA). We screened a total of 305 overlapped genes (differentially expressed metabolism-related genes). These genes were mainly involved in “oxidation reduction,” “steroid hormone biosynthesis,” “fatty acid metabolic process,” and “linoleic acid metabolism.” Furthermore, we screened ten optimal DEGs (CYP2C9, CYP3A4, and TKT, among others) by using the PS model. Two clinical factors of pathologic stage (P < .001, HR: 1.512 [1.219-1.875]) and PS status (P <.001, HR: 2.259 [1.522-3.354]) were independent prognostic predictors by cox regression analysis. Nomogram model showed a high predicted probability of overall survival time, and the AUC value was 0.837. The expression status of 7 proteins was frequently altered in normal or differential tumor tissues, such as liver cancer and stomach cancer samples.We have identified several metabolism-related biomarkers for prognosis prediction of HCC based on the PS model. Two clinical factors were independent prognostic predictors of pathologic stage and PS status (high/low risk). The prognosis prediction model described in this study is a useful and stable method for novel biomarker identification.

2022 ◽  
Vol 2022 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Dan Chen ◽  
Xiaoting Li ◽  
Hui Li ◽  
Kai Wang ◽  
Xianghua Tian

Background. As the most common hepatic malignancy, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) has a high incidence; therefore, in this paper, the immune-related genes were sought as biomarkers in liver cancer. Methods. In this study, a differential expression analysis of lncRNA and mRNA in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset between the HCC group and the normal control group was performed. Enrichment analysis was used to screen immune-related differentially expressed genes. Cox regression analysis and survival analysis were used to determine prognostic genes of HCC, whose expression was detected by molecular experiments. Finally, important immune cells were identified by immune cell infiltration and detected by flow cytometry. Results. Compared with the normal group, 1613 differentially expressed mRNAs (DEmRs) and 1237 differentially expressed lncRNAs (DElncRs) were found in HCC. Among them, 143 immune-related DEmRs and 39 immune-related DElncRs were screened out. These genes were mainly related to MAPK cascade, PI3K-AKT signaling pathway, and TGF-beta. Through Cox regression analysis and survival analysis, MMP9, SPP1, HAGLR, LINC02202, and RP11-598F7.3 were finally determined as the potential diagnostic biomarkers for HCC. The gene expression was verified by RT-qPCR and western blot. In addition, CD4 + memory resting T cells and CD8 + T cells were identified as protective factors for overall survival of HCC, and they were found highly expressed in HCC through flow cytometry. Conclusion. The study explored the dysregulation mechanism and potential biomarkers of immune-related genes and further identified the influence of immune cells on the prognosis of HCC, providing a theoretical basis for the prognosis prediction and immunotherapy in HCC patients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiang Zhou ◽  
Keying Zhang ◽  
Fa Yang ◽  
Chao Xu ◽  
Jianhua Jiao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a disease with higher morbidity, mortality, and poor prognosis in the whole world. Understanding the crosslink between HCC and the immune system is essential for people to uncover a few potential and valuable therapeutic strategies. This study aimed to reveal the correlation between HCC and immune-related genes and establish a clinical evaluation model. Methods: We had analyzed the clinical information consisted of 373 HCC and 49 normal samples from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA). The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were selected by the Wilcoxon test and the immune-related differentially expressed genes (IRDEGs) in DEGs were identified by matching DEGs with immune-related genes downloaded from the ImmPort database. Furthermore, the univariate Cox regression analysis and multivariate Cox regression analysis were performed to construct a prognostic risk model. Then, twenty-two types of tumor immune-infiltrating cells (TIICs) were downloaded from Tumor Immune Estimation Resource (TIMER) and were used to construct the correlational graphs between the TIICs and risk score by the CIBERSORT. Subsequently, the transcription factors (TFs) were gained in the Cistrome website and the differentially expressed TFs (DETFs) were achieved. Finally, the KEGG pathway analysis and GO analysis were performed to further understand the molecular mechanisms between DETFs and PDIRGs.Results: In our study, 5839 DEGs, 326 IRDEGs, and 31 prognosis-related IRDEGs (PIRDEGs) were identified. And 8 optimal PIRDEGs were employed to construct a prognostic risk model by multivariate Cox regression analysis. The correlation between risk genes and clinical characterizations and TIICs has verified that the prognostic model was effective in predicting the prognosis of HCC patients. Finally, several important immune-related pathways and molecular functions of the eight PIRDEGs were significantly enriched and there was a distinct association between the risk IRDEGs and TFs. Conclusion: The prognostic risk model showed a more valuable predicting role for HCC patients, and produced many novel therapeutic targets and strategies for HCC.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zaoqu Liu ◽  
Dechao Jiao ◽  
Xueliang Zhou ◽  
Yuan Yao ◽  
Zhaonan Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: A growing amount of evidence has suggested immune-related genes (IRGs) play a key role in the development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, there have been no investigations proposing a reliable prognostic signature in terms of tumor immunology. This study aimed to develop a robust signature based on IRGs in HCC.Methods: A total of 597 HCC patients were enrolled. The TCGA database was utilized for discovery, and the ICGC database was utilized for validation. Multiple algorithms (including univariate Cox, LASSO, and multivariate Cox regression) were performed to identify key prognostic IRGs and establish an immune-related risk signature. Bioinformatics analysis and R soft tools were utilized to annotate underlying biological functions. Results: A total of 1416 differentially expressed mRNAs (DEMs) were screened in the TCGA cohort, of which 90 were differentially expressed IRGs (DEIRGs). Using univariate Cox regression analysis, we identified 33 prognostically relevant DEIRGs. Using LASSO regression and multivariate Cox regression analysis, we extracted 8 optimal DEIRGs (APLN, CDK4, CXCL2, ESR1, IL1RN, PSMD2, SEMA3F, and SPP1) to construct a risk signature with the ability to distinguish cases as having a high or low risk of unfavorable prognosis in the TCGA cohort, and the signature was verified in the ICGC cohort. The signature was prognostically significant in all stratified cohorts and was deemed an independent prognostic factor for HCC. We also built a nomogram with good performance by combining the signature with clinicopathological factors to increase the accuracy of predicting HCC prognosis. By investigating the relationship of the risk score and 8 risk genes from our signature with clinical traits, we found that the aberrant expression of the immune-related risk genes is correlated with the development of HCC. Moreover, the high-risk group was higher than the low-risk group in terms of tumor mutation burden (TMB), immune cell infiltration, and the expression of immune checkpoints (PD-1, PD-L1, and CTLA-4), and functional enrichment analysis indicated the signature enriched an intensive immune phenotype.Conclusions: This study developed a robust immune-related risk signature and built a predictive nomogram that reliably predict overall survival in HCC, which may be helpful for clinical management and personalized immunotherapy decisions.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ze-bing Song ◽  
Guo-pei Zhang ◽  
shaoqiang li

Abstract Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignant tumor in the world which prognosis is poor. Therefore, a precise biomarker is needed to guide treatment and improve prognosis. More and more studies have shown that lncRNAs and immune response are closely related to the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma. The aim of this study was to establish a prognostic signature based on immune related lncRNAs for HCC.Methods: Univariate cox regression analysis was performed to identify immune related lncRNAs, which had negative correlation with overall survival (OS) of 370 HCC patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). A prognostic signature based on OS related lncRNAs was identified by using multivariate cox regression analysis. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network were performed to clarify the potential mechanism of lncRNAs included in prognostic signature. Results: A prognostic signature based on OS related lncRNAs (AC145207.5, AL365203.2, AC009779.2, ZFPM2-AS1, PCAT6, LINC00942) showed moderately in prognosis prediction, and related with pathologic stage (Stage I&II VS Stage III&IV), distant metastasis status (M0 VS M1) and tumor stage (T1-2 VS T3-4). CeRNA network constructed 15 aixs among differentially expressed immune related genes, lncRNAs included in prognostic signature and differentially expressed miRNA. GSEA indicated that these lncRNAs were involved in cancer-related pathways. Conclusion: We constructed a prognostic signature based on immune related lncRNAs which can predict prognosis and guide therapies for HCC.


Author(s):  
Qianqian Wu ◽  
Sutian Jiang ◽  
Tong Cheng ◽  
Manyu Xu ◽  
Bing Lu

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second most lethal malignant tumor because of its significant heterogeneity and complicated molecular pathogenesis. Novel prognostic biomarkers are urgently needed because no effective and reliable prognostic biomarkers currently exist for HCC patients. Increasing evidence has revealed that pyroptosis plays a role in the occurrence and progression of malignant tumors. However, the relationship between pyroptosis-related genes (PRGs) and HCC patient prognosis remains unclear. In this study, 57 PRGs were obtained from previous studies and GeneCards. The gene expression profiles and clinical data of HCC patients were acquired from public data portals. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analysis was performed to establish a risk model using TCGA data. Additionally, the risk model was further validated in an independent ICGC dataset. Our results showed that 39 PRGs were significantly differentially expressed between tumor and normal liver tissues in the TCGA cohort. Functional analysis confirmed that these PRGs were enriched in pyroptosis-related pathways. According to univariate Cox regression analysis, 14 differentially expressed PRGs were correlated with the prognosis of HCC patients in the TCGA cohort. A risk model integrating two PRGs was constructed to classify the patients into different risk groups. Poor overall survival was observed in the high-risk group of both TCGA (p &lt; 0.001) and ICGC (p &lt; 0.001) patients. Receiver operating characteristic curves demonstrated the accuracy of the model. Furthermore, the risk score was confirmed as an independent prognostic indicator via multivariate Cox regression analysis (TCGA cohort: HR = 3.346, p &lt; 0.001; ICGC cohort: HR = 3.699, p &lt; 0.001). Moreover, the single-sample gene set enrichment analysis revealed different immune statuses between high- and low-risk groups. In conclusion, our new pyroptosis-related risk model has potential application in predicting the prognosis of HCC patients.


Author(s):  
Philip J. Johnson ◽  
Sofi Dhanaraj ◽  
Sarah Berhane ◽  
Laura Bonnett ◽  
Yuk Ting Ma

Abstract Background The neutrophil–lymphocyte ratio (NLR), a presumed measure of the balance between neutrophil-associated pro-tumour inflammation and lymphocyte-dependent antitumour immune function, has been suggested as a prognostic factor for several cancers, including hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods In this study, a prospectively accrued cohort of 781 patients (493 HCC and 288 chronic liver disease (CLD) without HCC) were followed-up for more than 6 years. NLR levels between HCC and CLD patients were compared, and the effect of baseline NLR on overall survival amongst HCC patients was assessed via multivariable Cox regression analysis. Results On entry into the study (‘baseline’), there was no clinically significant difference in the NLR values between CLD and HCC patients. Amongst HCC patients, NLR levels closest to last visit/death were significantly higher compared to baseline. Multivariable Cox regression analysis showed that NLR was an independent prognostic factor, even after adjustment for the HCC stage. Conclusion NLR is a significant independent factor influencing survival in HCC patients, hence offering an additional dimension in prognostic models.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaopei Ye ◽  
Wenbin Tang ◽  
Ke Huang

Abstract Background: Autophagy is a biological process to eliminate dysfunctional organelles, aggregates or even long-lived proteins. . Nevertheless, the potential function and prognostic values of autophagy in Wilms Tumor (WT) are complex and remain to be clarifed. Therefore, we proposed to systematically examine the roles of autophagy-associated genes (ARGs) in WT.Methods: Here, we obtained differentially expressed autophagy-related genes (ARGs) between healthy and Wilms tumor from Therapeutically Applicable Research To Generate Effective Treatments(TARGET) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The functionalities of the differentially expressed ARGs were analyzed using Gene Ontology. Then univariate COX regression analysis and multivariate COX regression analysis were performed to acquire nine autophagy genes related to WT patients’ survival. According to the risk score, the patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups. The Kaplan-Meier curve demonstrated that patients with a high-risk score tend to have a poor prognosis.Results: Eighteen DEARGs were identifed, and nine ARGs were fnally utilized to establish the FAGs based signature in the TCGA cohort. we found that patients in the high-risk group were associated with mutations in TP53. We further conducted CIBERSORT analysis, and found that the infiltration of Macrophage M1 was increased in the high-risk group. Finally, the expression levels of crucial ARGs were verifed by the experiment, which were consistent with our bioinformatics analysis.Conclusions: we emphasized the clinical significance of autophagy in WT, established a prediction system based on autophagy, and identified a promising therapeutic target of autophagy for WT.


2021 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 153303382110414
Author(s):  
Xiaoyong Li ◽  
Jiaqong Lin ◽  
Yuguo pan ◽  
Peng Cui ◽  
Jintang Xia

Background: Liver progenitor cells (LPCs) play significant roles in the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, no studies on the value of LPC-related genes for evaluating HCC prognosis exist. We developed a gene signature of LPC-related genes for prognostication in HCC. Methods: To identify LPC-related genes, we analyzed mRNA expression arrays from a dataset (GSE57812 & GSE 37071) containing LPCs, mature hepatocytes, and embryonic stem cell samples. HCC RNA-Seq data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were used to explore the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to prognosis through DEG analysis and univariate Cox regression analysis. Lasso and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed to construct the LPC-related gene prognostic model in the TCGA training dataset. This model was validated in the TCGA testing set and an external dataset (International Cancer Genome Consortium [ICGC] dataset). Finally, we investigated the relationship between this prognostic model with tumor-node-metastasis stage, tumor grade, and vascular invasion of HCC. Results: Overall, 1770 genes were identified as LPC-related genes, of which 92 genes were identified as DEGs in HCC tissues compared with normal tissues. Furthermore, we randomly assigned patients from the TCGA dataset to the training and testing cohorts. Twenty-six DEGs correlated with overall survival (OS) in the univariate Cox regression analysis. Lasso and multivariate Cox regression analyses were performed in the TCGA training set, and a 3-gene signature was constructed to stratify patients into 2 risk groups: high-risk and low-risk. Patients in the high-risk group had significantly lower OS than those in the low-risk group. Receiver operating characteristic curve analysis confirmed the signature's predictive capacity. Moreover, the risk score was confirmed to be an independent predictor for patients with HCC. Conclusion: We demonstrated that the LPC-related gene signature can be used for prognostication in HCC. Thus, targeting LPCs may serve as a therapeutic alternative for HCC.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaohong - Liu ◽  
Qian - Xu ◽  
Zi-Jing - Li ◽  
Bin - Xiong

Abstract BackgroundMetabolic reprogramming is an important hallmark in the development of malignancies. Numerous metabolic genes have been demonstrated to participate in the progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, the prognostic significance of the metabolic genes in HCC remains elusive. MethodsWe downloaded the gene expression profiles and clinical information from the GEO, TCGA and ICGC databases. The differently expressed metabolic genes were identified by using Limma R package. Univariate Cox regression analysis and LASSO (Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator) Cox regression analysis were utilized to uncover the prognostic significance of metabolic genes. A metabolism-related prognostic model was constructed in TCGA cohort and validated in ICGC cohort. Furthermore, we constructed a nomogram to improve the accuracy of the prognostic model by using the multivariate Cox regression analysis.ResultsThe high-risk score predicted poor prognosis for HCC patients in the TCGA cohort, as confirmed in the ICGC cohort (P < 0.001). And in the multivariate Cox regression analysis, we observed that risk score could act as an independent prognostic factor for the TCGA cohort (HR (hazard ratio) 3.635, 95% CI (confidence interval)2.382-5.549) and the ICGC cohort (HR1.905, 95%CI 1.328-2.731). In addition, we constructed a nomogram for clinical use, which suggested a better prognostic model than risk score.ConclusionsOur study identified several metabolic genes with important prognostic value for HCC. These metabolic genes can influence the progression of HCC by regulating tumor biology and can also provide metabolic targets for the precise treatment of HCC.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Feng ◽  
Jian Li ◽  
Weiling Xuan ◽  
Hanbo Liu ◽  
Dexin Cheng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a prevalent primary liver cancer and the main cause of cancer mortality. Its high complexity and dismal prognosis bring dramatic difficulty to treatment. Due to the disclosed dual functions of autophagy in cancer development, understanding autophagy-related genes devotes into seeking novel biomarkers for HCC. Methods Differential expression of genes in normal and tumor groups was analyzed to acquire autophagy-related genes in HCC. GO and KEGG pathway analyses were conducted on these genes. Genes were then screened by univariate regression analysis. The screened genes were subjected to multivariate Cox regression analysis to build a prognostic model. The model was validated by ICGC validation set. Results Altogether, 42 autophagy-related differential genes were screened by differential expression analysis. Enrichment analysis showed that they were mainly enriched in pathways including regulation of autophagy and cell apoptosis. Genes were screened by univariate analysis and multivariate Cox regression analysis to build a prognostic model. The model was constituted by 6 feature genes: EIF2S1, BIRC5, SQSTM1, ATG7, HDAC1, FKBP1A. Validation confirmed the accuracy and independence of this model in predicting HCC patient’s prognosis. Conclusion A total of 6 feature genes were identified to build a prognostic risk model. This model is conducive to investigating interplay between autophagy-related genes and HCC prognosis.


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