scholarly journals Identification of IGF2BP2 as a Prognostic Biomarker and Immunotherapeutic Target Based on Alternative Splicing Events in Glioblastoma

Author(s):  
Xin-Yu Li ◽  
Lei Hou ◽  
Lu-yu Zhang ◽  
Xue-yuan Li ◽  
xi-tao Yang

Abstract Aim: A glioblastoma (GBM) prognostic model was developed with GBM -related alternative splicing (AS) data and prognostic markers were identified. Methods: AS data and clinical data of GBM patients were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) SpliceSeq database and TCGA database, respectively. The data from these two databases were intersected to screen the prognosis-associated AS events, which was subsequently examined in Univariate Cox regression models. To avoid model overfitting, LASSO regression analysis was conducted. On the basis of these AS events, we established a prognostic model of GBM with the use of multivariate Cox regression analysis. On the strength of this model, the patients were assigned into high-risk and low-risk groups with a median risk score as the threshold. Kaplan-Meier survival, receiver operating characteristic (ROC), and calibration curves were applied to evaluate the performance of this model. Finally, combined with the risk model and clinicopathological characteristics, Cox regression analysis was utilized to identify the independent prognostic markers of GBM, and a nomogram was constructed. Results: The AS and clinical data of 169 GBM patients from the TCGA SpliceSeq and TCGA databases were collected. Univariate Cox regression analysis identified 1000 prognosis-related AS events in GBM, and then Lasso regression analysis identified 16 AS events. A GBM prognostic risk model was constructed based on AS events of 7 genes (FAM86B1, ZNF302, C19orf57, RPL39L, CBLL1, RWDD1, IGF2BP2). Through this model, we found lower overall survival (OS) rates of the high-risk population versus the low-risk population (p < 0.05). ROC and calibration curve analyses demonstrated the good ability of this model to predict the OS of GBM patients. Cox regression analysis suggested risk score as an independent prognostic factor for GBM. We also found that IGF2BP2 is associated with patient prognosis and have a strong relationship with immunotherapy response. Conclusion: The prognostic model based on AS events can significantly distinguish the survival rate of high-risk and low-risk GBM patients and IGF2BP2 were identified as a novel prognostic biomarker and immunotherapeutic target.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xiaoping Li ◽  
Jishang Chen ◽  
Qihe Yu ◽  
Hui Huang ◽  
Zhuangsheng Liu ◽  
...  

Background: A surge in newly diagnosed breast cancer has overwhelmed the public health system worldwide. Joint effort had beed made to discover the genetic mechanism of these disease globally. Accumulated research has revealed autophagy may act as a vital part in the pathogenesis of breast cancer.Objective: Aim to construct a prognostic model based on autophagy-related lncRNAs and investigate their potential mechanisms in breast cancer.Methods: The transcriptome data and clinical information of patients with breast cancer were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Autophagy-related genes were obtained from the Human Autophagy Database (HADb). Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) related to autophagy were acquired through the Pearson correlation analysis. Univariate Cox regression analysis as well as the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis were used to identify autophagy-related lncRNAs with prognostic value. We constructed a risk scoring model to assess the prognostic significance of the autophagy-related lncRNAs signatures. The nomogram was then established based on the risk score and clinical indicators. Through the calibration curve, the concordance index (C-index) and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were evaluated to obtain the model's predictive performance. Subgroup analysis was performed to evaluate the differential ability of the model. Subsequently, gene set enrichment analysis was conducted to investigate the potential functions of these lncRNAs.Results: We attained 1,164 breast cancer samples from the TCGA database and 231 autophagy-related genes from the HAD database. Through correlation analysis, 179 autophagy-related lncRNAs were finally identified. Univariate Cox regression analysis and LASSO regression analysis further screened 18 prognosis-associated lncRNAs. The risk scoring model was constructed to divide patients into high-risk and low-risk groups. It was found that the low-risk group had better overall survival (OS) than those of the high-risk group. Then, the nomogram model including age, tumor stage, TNM stage and risk score was established. The evaluation index (C-index: 0.78, 3-year OS AUC: 0.813 and 5-year OS AUC: 0.785) showed that the nomogram had excellent predictive power. Subgroup analysis showed there were difference in OS between high-risk and low-risk patients in different subgroups (stage I-II, ER positive, Her-2 negative and non-TNBC subgroups; all P &lt; 0.05). According to the results of gene set enrichment analysis, these lncRNAs were involved in the regulation of multicellular organismal macromolecule metabolic process in multicellular organisms, nucleotide excision repair, oxidative phosphorylation, and TGF-β signaling pathway.Conclusions: We identified 18 autophagy-related lncRNAs with prognostic value in breast cancer, which may regulate tumor growth and progression in multiple ways.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guoliang Zheng ◽  
GuoJun Zhang ◽  
Yan Zhao ◽  
Zhichao Zheng

We constructed a prognostic risk model for colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) using microRNAs (miRNAs) as biomarkers. Clinical data of patients with COADs and miRNA-seq data were from TCGA, and the differential expression of miRNAs (carcinoma vs. para-carcinoma tissues) was assessed using R software. COAD data were randomly divided into Training and Testing Sets. A linear prognostic risk model was constructed using Cox regression analysis based on the Training Set. Patients were classified as high-risk or low-risk according to the score of the prognostic model. Survival analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to evaluate model performance. The gene targets in the prognostic model were identified and their biological functions were analyzed. Analysis of COAD and normal cell lines using qPCR was used to verify the model. There were 134 up-regulated and 140 down-regulated miRNAs. We used the Training Set to develop a prognostic model based on the expression of seven miRNAs. ROC analysis indicated this model had acceptable prediction accuracy (area under the curve=0.784). Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that overall survival was worse in the high-risk group. Cox regression analysis showed that the 7-miRNA Risk Score was an independent prognostic factor. The 2,863 predicted target genes were mainly enriched in the MAPK, PI3K-AKT, proteoglycans in cancer, and mTOR signaling pathways. For unknown reasons, expression of these miRNAs in cancerous and normal cells differed somewhat from model predictions. Regardless, the 7-miRNA Risk Score can be used to predict COAD prognosis and may help to guide clinical treatment.


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.


PeerJ ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. e8128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cheng Yue ◽  
Hongtao Ma ◽  
Yubai Zhou

Background Lung cancer has the highest morbidity and mortality worldwide, and lung adenocarcinoma (LADC) is the most common pathological subtype. Accumulating evidence suggests the tumor microenvironment (TME) is correlated with the tumor progress and the patient’s outcome. As the major components of TME, the tumor-infiltrated immune cells and stromal cells have attracted more and more attention. In this study, differentially expressed immune and stromal signature genes were used to construct a TME-related prognostic model for predicting the outcomes of LADC patients. Methods The expression profiles of LADC samples with clinical information were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). The differentially expressed genes (DEGs) related to the TME of LADC were identified using TCGA dataset by Wilcoxon rank sum test. The prognostic effects of TME-related DEGs were analyzed using univariate Cox regression. Then, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression was performed to reduce the overfit and the number of genes for further analysis. Next, the prognostic model was constructed by step multivariate Cox regression and risk score of each sample was calculated. Then, survival and Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analyses were conducted to validate the model using TCGA and GEO datasets, respectively. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis of gene signature was performed using Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA). Finally, the overall immune status, tumor purity and the expression profiles of HLA genes of high- and low-risk samples was further analyzed to reveal the potential mechanisms of prognostic effects of the model. Results A total of 93 TME-related DEGs were identified, of which 23 DEGs were up-regulated and 70 DEGs were down-regulated. The univariate cox analysis indicated that 23 DEGs has the prognostic effects, the hazard ratio ranged from 0.65 to 1.25 (p < 0.05). Then, seven genes were screened out from the 23 DEGs by LASSO regression method and were further analyzed by step multivariate Cox regression. Finally, a three-gene (ADAM12, Bruton Tyrosine Kinase (BTK), ERG) signature was constructed, and ADAM12, BTK can be used as independent prognostic factors. The three-gene signature well stratified the LADC patients in both training (TCGA) and testing (GEO) datasets as high-risk and low-risk groups, the 3-year area under curve (AUC) of ROC curves of three GEO sets were 0.718 (GSE3141), 0.646 (GSE30219) and 0.643 (GSE50081). The GSEA analysis indicated that highly expressed ADAM12, BTK, ERG mainly correlated with the activation of pathways involving in focal adhesion, immune regulation. The immune analysis indicated that the low-risk group has more immune activities and higher expression of HLA genes than that of the high-risk group. In sum, we identified and constructed a three TME-related DEGs signature, which could be used to predict the prognosis of LADC patients.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0260876
Author(s):  
Jun Yang ◽  
Jiaying Zhou ◽  
Cuili Li ◽  
Shaohua Wang

Background Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common solid tumor in children. NB treatment has made significant progress; however, given the high degree of heterogeneity, basic research findings and their clinical application to NB still face challenges. Herein, we identify novel prognostic models for NB. Methods We obtained RNA expression data of NB and normal nervous tissue from TARGET and GTEx databases and determined the differential expression patterns of RNA binding protein (RBP) genes between normal and cancerous tissues. Lasso regression and Cox regression analyses identified the five most important differentially expressed genes and were used to construct a new prognostic model. The function and prognostic value of these RBPs were systematically studied and the predictive accuracy verified in an independent dataset. Results In total, 348 differentially expressed RBPs were identified. Of these, 166 were up-regulated and 182 down-regulated RBPs. Two hubs RBPs (CPEB3 and CTU1) were identified as prognostic-related genes and were chosen to build the prognostic risk score models. Multivariate Cox analysis was performed on genes from univariate Cox regression and Lasso regression analysis using proportional hazards regression model. A five gene prognostic model: Risk score = (-0.60901*expCPEB3)+(0.851637*expCTU1) was built. Based on this model, the overall survival of patients in the high-risk subgroup was lower (P = 2.152e-04). The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver-operator characteristic curve of the prognostic model was 0.720 in the TARGET cohort. There were significant differences in the survival rate of patients in the high and low-risk subgroups in the validation data set GSE85047 (P = 0.1237e-08), with the AUC 0.730. The risk model was also regarded as an independent predictor of prognosis (HR = 1.535, 95% CI = 1.368–1.722, P = 2.69E-13). Conclusions This study identified a potential risk model for prognosis in NB using Cox regression analysis. RNA binding proteins (CPEB3 and CTU1) can be used as molecular markers of NB.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Boxuan Liu ◽  
Yun Zhao ◽  
Shuanying Yang

Abstract Background: Lung adenocarcinoma is the most occurred pathological type among non-small cell lung cancer. Although huge progress has been made in terms of early diagnosis, precision treatment in recent years, the overall 5-year survival rate of a patient remains low. In our study, we try to construct an autophagy-related lncRNA prognostic signature that may guide clinical practice.Methods: The mRNA and lncRNA expression matrix of lung adenocarcinoma patients were retrieved from TCGA database. Next, we constructed a co-expression network of lncRNAs and autophagy-related genes. Lasso regression and multivariate Cox regression were then applied to establish a prognostic risk model. Subsequently, a risk score was generated to differentiate high and low risk group and a ROC curve and Nomogram to visualize the predictive ability of current signature. Finally, gene ontology and pathway enrichment analysis were executed via GSEA.Results: A total of 1,703 autophagy-related lncRNAs were screened and five autophagy-related lncRNAs (LINC01137, AL691432.2, LINC01116, AL606489.1 and HLA-DQB1-AS1) were finally included in our signature. Judging from univariate(HR=1.075, 95% CI: 1.046–1.104) and multivariate(HR =1.088, 95%CI = 1.057 − 1.120) Cox regression analysis, the risk score is an independent factor for LUAD patients. Further, the AUC value based on the risk score for 1-year, 3-year, 5-year, was 0.735, 0.672 and 0.662 respectively. Finally, the lncRNAs included in our signature were primarily enriched in autophagy process, metabolism, p53 pathway and JAK/STAT pathway. Conclusions: Overall, our study indicated that the prognostic model we generated had certain predictability for LUAD patients’ prognosis.


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 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kebing Huang ◽  
Xiaoyu Yue ◽  
Yinfei Zheng ◽  
Zhengwei Zhang ◽  
Meng Cheng ◽  
...  

Glioma is well known as the most aggressive and prevalent primary malignant tumor in the central nervous system. Molecular subtypes and prognosis biomarkers remain a promising research area of gliomas. Notably, the aberrant expression of mesenchymal (MES) subtype related long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) is significantly associated with the prognosis of glioma patients. In this study, MES-related genes were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and the Ivy Glioblastoma Atlas Project (Ivy GAP) data sets of glioma, and MES-related lncRNAs were acquired by performing co-expression analysis of these genes. Next, Cox regression analysis was used to establish a prognostic model, that integrated ten MES-related lncRNAs. Glioma patients in TCGA were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups based on the median risk score; compared with the low-risk groups, patients in the high-risk group had shorter survival times. Additionally, we measured the specificity and sensitivity of our model with the ROC curve. Univariate and multivariate Cox analyses showed that the prognostic model was an independent prognostic factor for glioma. To verify the predictive power of these candidate lncRNAs, the corresponding RNA-seq data were downloaded from the Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA), and similar results were obtained. Next, we performed the immune cell infiltration profile of patients between two risk groups, and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to detect functional annotation. Finally, the protective factors DGCR10 and HAR1B, and risk factor SNHG18 were selected for functional verification. Knockdown of DGCR10 and HAR1B promoted, whereas knockdown of SNHG18 inhibited the migration and invasion of gliomas. Collectively, we successfully constructed a prognostic model based on a ten MES-related lncRNAs signature, which provides a novel target for predicting the prognosis for glioma patients.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Li ◽  
Dongcen Ge ◽  
Shu-lan Sun

Abstract Background. Ferroptosis is a newly discovered form of cell death characterized by iron-dependent lipid peroxidation. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between ferroptosis and the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD).Methods. RNA-seq data was collected from the LUAD dataset of The Cancer Genome Altas (TCGA) database. We used ferroptosis-related genes as the basis, and identify the differential expression genes (DEGs) between cancer and paracancer. The univariate Cox regression analysis were used to screen the prognostic-related genes. We divided the patients into training and validation sets. Then, we screened out key genes and built a 5 genes prognostic prediction model by the applications of the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) 10-fold cross-validation and the multi-variate Cox regression analysis. We divided the cases by the median value of risk score and validated this model in the validation set. Meanwhile, we analyzed the somatic mutations, and estimated the score of immune infiltration in the high- and low-risk groups, as well as performed functional enrichment analysis of DEGs.Results. The result revealed that the high-risk score triggered the worse prognosis. The maximum area under curve (AUC) of the training set and the validation set of in this study was 0.7 and 0.69. Moreover, we integrated the age, gender, and tumor stage to construct the composite nomogram. The charts indicated that the AUC of cases with survival time of 1, 3 and 5 years are 0.698, 0.71 and 0.73. In addition, the mutation frequency of patients in the high-risk group was higher than that in the low-risk group. Simultaneously, DEGs were mainly enriched in ferroptosis-related pathways by analyzing the functional results.Conclusion. This study constructed a novel LUAD prognosis prediction model base on 5 ferroptosis-related genes, which can provide a prognostic evaluation tool for the clinical therapeutic decision.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weijie Xue ◽  
Bingzi Dong ◽  
Yixiu Wang ◽  
Yuwei Xie ◽  
Qingkai Xue ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD) is one of the most common malignant tumors worldwide. In this study, we attempt to construct a valid immune-associated gene prognostic index risk model which could predict the survival of HCC patients and the efficacy of immune check point inhibitors (ICIs) treatment. Methods The transcriptome, clinical and gene mutational data were obtained from the TCGA database. And immune-related genes were downloaded from the ImmPort and InnateDB databases. Functional and enrichment analysis was performed to identify the potential molecular function and mechanism of these differentially expressed immune-associated genes. And then candidates genes related to overall survival (OS) of STAD was obtained by weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). Next, the immune prognostic risk model was constructed via multivariate Cox regression analysis and verified with GEO STAD cohort. Afterwards, the association between the risk model and the immune characteristics and was estimated. Finally, the correlation between the risk model and efficacy of ICIs therapy. Results A total of 493 immune-related genes were identified to enriched in function associated to immune response as well as in immune and tumor-related pathways. Based on the cox regression analysis, we constructed an immune-associated gene prognostic index (IAGPI) risk model based on 8 genes (RNASE2, CGB5, INHBE, PTGER3, CTLA4, DUSP1, APOA1 and CD36). Patients were divided into two subsets according to risk score. Patients in low risk set had a better OS than those in high. In the low risk set, there were more CD8 T cells, activated memory CD4 T cells, follicular helper T cells and M1 macrophages, while monocytes, M2 macrophages, eosinophils and neutrophils were more plentiful in the high. And patients in the low risk set were more sensitive to ICIs therapy. Conclusion The IAGPI risk model can precisely predict prognosis, reflect tumor immune microenvironment and predict the efficacy of ICIs therapy in STAD patients.


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