Integrated analysis of iron metabolic-related genes in hepatocellular carcinoma
Abstract Background Iron is a nutrient essential for hemoglobin synthesis, DNA synthesis, and energy metabolism in all mammals. Iron metabolic involved in numerous types of cancers including hepatocellular cancer. In this study, we aim to identify prognostic model that based on iron metabolic-related genes that could effectively predict the prognosis for HCC patients. Methods The RNA microarray and clinical data of HCC patients that obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We identify the clusters of HCC patients with different clinical outcome performed by consensus clustering analysis. Four iron metabolic-related genes (FLVCR1, FTL, HIF1A, HMOX1) were screen for prognostic model by performed the Cox regression analysis. The efficacy of prognostic model was validated by the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) database. Meantime, the expressions value of FLVCR1, FTL, HIF1A, HMOX1 was performed using Oncomine database, the Human Protein Atlas and Kaplan Meier-plotter. Result The patients with low-risk score have better prognosis than high risk score both in TCGA cohort and ICGC cohort. The prognostic model showed well performance for predicting the prognosis of HCC patients than other clinicopathological parameters by OS-related ROC curves. Conclusion Our survival models that based on Iron metabolic can be independent risk factors for hepatocellular carcinoma patients.