scholarly journals Construction of Co-Expression Modules Related to Survival by WGCNA and Identification of Potential Prognostic Biomarkers in Liver Cancer

Author(s):  
Tian Wang ◽  
Lin-li Zhang ◽  
Qing-hui Feng ◽  
Meng-ling Wang ◽  
Yu-Chun Fan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Many recent studies have reported the role of WGCNA in liver cancer, and screened out modules related to the clinical characteristics of liver cancer. The prognostic role of modular genes provides a reference for the treatment of liver cancer and the study of survival time extension. MethodsUse edgeR to screen differentially expressed genes, and use weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) method to divide differential genes into modules; combined with clinical data, select gene modules that are highly related to clinical information to construct a prognostic model. Use univariate Cox and multivariate Cox regression analysis to predict the value of prognosis. The Kaplan-Meier method and ROC curves were used to evaluate the value of features of predicting prognosis.ResultsIn the co-expression analysis of liver cancer, the two gene modules darkrey and navajowhite2 was highly correlated with the TNM stag of liver cancer. In addition, they were related to the reduction process and the activation of specific DNA-binding transcription factors. Constructing a risk ratio model with these two modules shows that the overall survival time of patients in the high-risk group is lower than that of the low-risk group. In the module, ABLIM2, RP11-109J4.1, TXNRD1, C9orf106, LINC00677, CYP11B2, AC005550.3 and MIR3945HG belong to the Hub gene, and can also be used as independent prognostic factors, which may become potential biomarkers for the diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer. Conclusion This studies identified and screened the prognostic genes RP11-109J4.1, TXNRD1, C9orf106, LINC00677, CYP11B2, AC005550.3 and MIR3945HG related to the progression of liver cancer, which can provide a reference form the diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer.

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 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sijia Li ◽  
Hongyang Zhang ◽  
Wei Li

Abstract Background: The purpose of our study is establishing a model based on ferroptosis-related genes predicting the prognosis of patients with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC).Methods: In our study, transcriptome and clinical data of HNSCC patients were from The Cancer Genome Atlas, ferroptosis-related genes and pathways were from Ferroptosis Signatures Database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were screened by comparing tumor and adjacent normal tissues. Functional enrichment analysis of DEGs, protein-protein interaction network and gene mutation examination were applied. Univariate Cox regression analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression were used to identified DEGs. The model was constructed by multivariate Cox regression analysis and verified by Kaplan-Meier analysis. The relationship between risk scores and other clinical features was also analyzed. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis was used to verified the independence of our model. The model was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic analysis and calculation of the area under the curve (AUC). A nomogram model based on risk score, age, gender and TNM stages was constructed.Results: We analyzed data including 500 tumor tissues and 44 adjacent normal tissues and 259 ferroptosis-related genes, then obtained 73 DEGs. Univariate Cox regression analysis screened out 16 genes related to overall survival, and LASSO analysis fingered out 12 of them with prognostic value. A risk score model based on these 12 genes was constructed by multivariate Cox regression analysis. According to the median risk score, patients were divided into high-risk group and low-risk group. The survival rate of high-risk group was significantly lower than that of low-risk group in Kaplan-Meier curve. Risk scores were related to T and grade. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis showed our model was an independent prognostic factor. The AUC was 0.669. The nomogram showed high accuracy predicting the prognosis of HNSCC patients.Conclusion: Our model based on 12 ferroptosis-related genes performed excellently in predicting the prognosis of HNSCC patients. Ferroptosis-related genes may be promising biomarkers for HNSCC treatment and prognosis.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Menglin He ◽  
Cheng Hu ◽  
Jian Deng ◽  
Hui Ji ◽  
Weiqian Tian

Abstract Background: Breast cancer (BC) is a kind of cancer with high incidence and mortality in female. Conventional clinical characteristics are far from accurate to predict individual outcomes. Therefore, we aimed to develop a novel signature to predict the survival of patients with BC. Methods: We analyzed the data of a training cohort from the TCGA database and a validation cohort from GEO database. After the applications of GSEA and Cox regression analyses, a glycolysis-related signature for predicting the survival of patients with BC was developed. The signature contains AK3, CACNA1H, IL13RA1, NUP43, PGK1, and SDC1. Then, we constructed a risk score formula to classify the patients into high and low-risk groups based on the expression levels of six-gene in patients. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and the Kaplan-Meier curve were used to assess the predicted capacity of the model. Next, a nomogram was developed to predict the outcomes of patients with risk score and clinical features in 1, 3, and 5 years. We further used Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database to validate the expressions of the six biomarkers in tumor and sample tissues.Results: We constructed a six-gene signature to predict the outcomes of patients with BC. The patients in high-risk group showed poor prognosis than that in low-risk group. The AUC values were 0.719 and 0.702, showing that the prediction performance of the signature is acceptable. Additionally, Cox regression analysis revealed that these biomarkers could independently predict the prognosis of BC patients without being affected by clinical factors. The expression levels of all six biomarkers in BC tissues were higher than that in normal tissues except AK3. Conclusion: We developed a six-gene signature to predict the prognosis of patients with BC. Our signature has been proved to have the ability to make an accurate and obvious prediction and might be used to expand the prediction methods in clinical.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Li Liu ◽  
She Tian ◽  
Zhu Li ◽  
Yongjun Gong ◽  
Hao Zhang

Abstract Background : Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common clinical malignant tumors, resulting in high mortality and poor prognosis. Studies have found that LncRNA plays an important role in the onset, metastasis and recurrence of hepatocellular carcinoma. The immune system plays a vital role in the development, progression, metastasis and recurrence of cancer. Therefore, immune-related lncRNA can be used as a novel biomarker to predict the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma. Methods : The transcriptome data and clinical data of HCC patients were obtained by using The Cancer Genome Atlas-Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma (TCGA‑LIHC), and immune-related genes were extracted from the Molecular Signatures Database (IMMUNE RESPONSE M19817 and IMMUNE SYSTEM PROCESS M13664). By constructing the co-expression network and Cox regression analysis, 13 immune-lncRNAs was identified to predict the prognosis of HCC patients. Patients were divided into high risk group and low risk group by using the risk score formula, and the difference in overall survival (OS) between the two groups was reflected by Kaplan-Meier survival curve. The time - dependent receiver operating characteristics (ROC) analysis and principal component analysis (PCA) were used to evaluate 13 immune -lncRNAs signature. Results : Through TCGA - LIHC extracted from 343 cases of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma RNA - Seq data and clinical data, 331 immune-related genes were extracted from the Molecular Signatures Database , co-expression networks and Cox regression analysis were constructed, 13 immune-lncRNAs signature was identified as biomarkers to predict the prognosis of patients. At the same time using the risk score median divided the patients into high risk and low risk groups, and through the Kaplan-Meier survival curve analysis found that high-risk group of patients' overall survival (OS) less low risk group of patients. The AUC value of the ROC curve is 0.828, and principal component analysis (PCA) results showed that patients could be clearly divided into two parts by immune-lncRNAs, which provided evidence for the use of 13 immune-lncRNAs signature as prognostic markers. Conclusion : Our study identified 13 immune-lncRNAs signature that can effectively predict the prognosis of HCC patients, which may be a new prognostic indicator for predicting clinical outcomes.


2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoyu Deng ◽  
Qinghua Bi ◽  
Shihan Chen ◽  
Xianhua Chen ◽  
Shuhui Li ◽  
...  

Although great progresses have been made in the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), its prognostic marker remains controversial. In this current study, weighted correlation network analysis and Cox regression analysis showed significant prognostic value of five autophagy-related long non-coding RNAs (AR-lncRNAs) (including TMCC1-AS1, PLBD1-AS1, MKLN1-AS, LINC01063, and CYTOR) for HCC patients from data in The Cancer Genome Atlas. By using them, we constructed a five-AR-lncRNA prognostic signature, which accurately distinguished the high- and low-risk groups of HCC patients. All of the five AR lncRNAs were highly expressed in the high-risk group of HCC patients. This five-AR-lncRNA prognostic signature showed good area under the curve (AUC) value (AUC = 0.751) for the overall survival (OS) prediction in either all HCC patients or HCC patients stratified according to several clinical traits. A prognostic nomogram with this five-AR-lncRNA signature predicted the 3- and 5-year OS outcomes of HCC patients intuitively and accurately (concordance index = 0.745). By parallel comparison, this five-AR-lncRNA signature has better prognosis accuracy than the other three recently published signatures. Furthermore, we discovered the prediction ability of the signature on therapeutic outcomes of HCC patients, including chemotherapy and immunotherapeutic responses. Gene set enrichment analysis and gene mutation analysis revealed that dysregulated cell cycle pathway, purine metabolism, and TP53 mutation may play an important role in determining the OS outcomes of HCC patients in the high-risk group. Collectively, our study suggests a new five-AR-lncRNA prognostic signature for HCC patients.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Congbo Yue ◽  
Tianyi Zhao ◽  
Shoucai Zhang ◽  
Yingjie Liu ◽  
Guixi Zheng ◽  
...  

Abstract Alternative splicing (AS) events play a crucial role in the tumorigenesis and progression of cancer. Transcriptome data and Percent Spliced In (PSI) values of OV patients were downloaded from TCGA database and TCGA SpliceSeq. Totally we identified 1,472 AS events that were associated with survival of OV and exon skipping (ES) was the most important type. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were performed to identify survival-associated AS events and develop the prognostic model based on 11-AS events. The immune cells and different response to cytotoxic T lymphocyte associated antigen 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death protein 1 (PD-1) blockers in low-risk and high-risk group of OV patients were analyzed. Ten kinds of immune cells were found up-regulated in low-risk group. Activated B cell, natural killer T cell, natural killer cell and regulatory T cell were associated with survival of OV. The patients in low-risk group had good response to CTLA-4 and PD-1 blockers treatment. Moreover, a regulatory network was established according to the correlation between AS events and splicing factors (SFs). The present study provided valuable insights into the underlying mechanisms of OV. AS events that were correlated with the immune system might be potential therapeutic targets.


Author(s):  
Peng Gu ◽  
Lei Zhang ◽  
Ruitao Wang ◽  
Wentao Ding ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
...  

Background: Female breast cancer is currently the most frequently diagnosed cancer in the world. This study aimed to develop and validate a novel hypoxia-related long noncoding RNA (HRL) prognostic model for predicting the overall survival (OS) of patients with breast cancer.Methods: The gene expression profiles were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. A total of 200 hypoxia-related mRNAs were obtained from the Molecular Signatures Database. The co-expression analysis between differentially expressed hypoxia-related mRNAs and lncRNAs based on Spearman’s rank correlation was performed to screen out 166 HRLs. Based on univariate Cox regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator Cox regression analysis in the training set, we filtered out 12 optimal prognostic hypoxia-related lncRNAs (PHRLs) to develop a prognostic model. Kaplan–Meier survival analysis, receiver operating characteristic curves, area under the curve, and univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses were used to test the predictive ability of the risk model in the training, testing, and total sets.Results: A 12-HRL prognostic model was developed to predict the survival outcome of patients with breast cancer. Patients in the high-risk group had significantly shorter median OS, DFS (disease-free survival), and predicted lower chemosensitivity (paclitaxel, docetaxel) compared with those in the low-risk group. Also, the risk score based on the expression of the 12 HRLs acted as an independent prognostic factor. The immune cell infiltration analysis revealed that the immune scores of patients in the high-risk group were lower than those of the patients in the low-risk group. RT-qPCR assays were conducted to verify the expression of the 12 PHRLs in breast cancer tissues and cell lines.Conclusion: Our study uncovered dozens of potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets related to the hypoxia signaling pathway in breast cancer.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Gongmin Zhu ◽  
Hongwei Xia ◽  
Qiulin Tang ◽  
Feng Bi

Abstract Background Tumor metastasis is one of the leading reasons of the dismal prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is closely associated with tumor metastasis including HCC. The purpose of this study is to construct and validate an EMT-related gene signature for predicting the prognosis of HCC patients. Methods Gene expression data of HCC patients was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to found the EMT-related gene sets which were obviously distinct between normal samples and paired HCC samples. Cox regression analysis was used to develop an EMT-related prognostic signature, and the performance of the signature was evaluated by Kaplan–Meier curves and time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. A nomogram incorporating the independent predictors was established. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was used to detect the expression levels of the hub genes in HCC cell lines, and the role of PDCD6 in the metastasis of HCC was determined by functional experiments. Results An EMT-related 5-gene signature (PDCD6, TCOF1, TRIM28, EZH2 and FAM83D) was constructed using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis. Based on the signature, the HCC patients were classified into high- and low-risk groups, and patients in high-risk group had a poor prognosis. Time-dependent ROC and Cox regression analyses suggested that the signature could predict HCC prognosis exactly and independently. The predictive capacity of the signature was also validated in two external cohorts. GSEA results showed that many cancer-related signaling pathways such as PI3K/Akt/mTOR pathway and TGF-β/SMAD pathway were enriched in high-risk group. The result of qRT-PCR revealed that PDCD6, TCOF1 and FAM83D were highly expressed in HCC cancer cells. Among them, PDCD6 were found to promote cell migration and invasion. Conclusion The EMT-related 5-gene signature can serve as a promising prognostic biomarker for HCC patients and may provide a novel mechanism of HCC metastasis.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rui Wang ◽  
Zian Feng ◽  
Jie Hu ◽  
Xiaodong He ◽  
Zuojun Shen

Abstract Background: N6-methyladenosine (m6A) RNA modification is the most abundant modification method in mRNA, and it plays an important role in the occurrence and development of many cancers. However, data on the role of m6A RNA methylation regulators in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) are still lacking. This paper mainly discusses the role of m6A RNA methylation regulators in LUAD, to identify novel prognostic biomarkers.Methods: The gene expression data of 19 m6A methylation regulator in LUAD patients and its relevant clinical parameters were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression algorithm were performed to construct a risk signature and evaluated its prognostic prediction efficiency by using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The risk score of each patient was calculated according to the risk signature, and LUAD patients were divided into high-risk group and low-risk group. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis were used to identify the independent prognostic significance of risk signature. Finally, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) were used to explore the differential signaling pathways and cellular processes between the two groups.Results: The expression of 15 m6A RNA methylation regulators in LUAD tissues was significantly different than that in normal tissues. YTHDF3, YTHDF2, KIAA1429, HNRNPA2B1, RBM15, METTL3, HNRNPC, YTHDF1, IGF2BP2, IGF2BP3, IGF2BP1 were significantly up-regulated in LUAD, and the expressions of FTO, ZC3H13, WTAP, and METL14 were significantly down-regulated. We selected IGF2BP1, HNRNPC, and HNRNPA2B1 to construct the risk signature. ROC curve indicated the area under the curve (AUC) was 0.659, which means the risk signature had a good prediction efficiency. The results of Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression analysis showed that the risk score can be used as an independent prognostic factor for LUAD.Conclusions: The m6A RNA methylation regulators IGF2BP1, HNRNPC, and HNRNPA2B1 have a significant correlation with the clinicopathological characteristics of LUAD, which may be a promising prognostic feature and clinical treatment target.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
BO SONG ◽  
Lijun Tian ◽  
Fan Zhang ◽  
Zheyu Lin ◽  
Boshen Gong ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine malignancy worldwide. The incidence of TC is high and increasing worldwide due to continuous improvements in diagnostic technology. TC is still often overtreated due to a lack of reliable diagnostic biomarkers. Therefore, determining accurate prognostic predictions to stratify TC patients is important.Methods: Raw data were downloaded from the TCGA database, and pairwise comparisons were applied to identify differentially expressed immune-related lncRNA (DEirlncRNA) pairs. Then, we used univariate Cox regression analysis and a modified Lasso algorithm on these pairs to construct a risk assessment model for TC. Next, TC patients were assigned to high- and low-risk groups based on the optimal cutoff score of the model for the 1-year ROC curve. We evaluated the signature in terms of prognostic independence, predictive value, immune cell infiltration, ICI-related molecules and small-molecule inhibitor efficacy. Results: We identified 30 DEirlncRNA pairs through Lasso regression, and 14 pairs served as the novel predictive signature. The high-risk group had a significantly poorer prognosis than the low-risk group. Cox regression analysis revealed that this immune-related signature can predict prognosis independently and reliably for TC. With the CIBERSORT algorithm, we found an association between the signature and immune cell infiltration. Additionally, several immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-related molecules, such as PD-1 and PD-L1, showed a negative correlation with the high-risk group. We further found that some commonly used small-molecule inhibitors, such as sunitinib, were related to this new signature. Conclusions: We constructed a prognostic immune-related lncRNA signature that can predict TC patient survival without considering the technical bias of different platforms, and this signature also sheds light on TC overall prognosis and novel clinical treatments, such as ICB therapy and small molecular inhibitors.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document