Development and Validation of an Apoptosis-Related Genes Signature in Patients with Gastric Cancer

Abstract

Background: Gastric cancer (GC) is a common malignant tumour of the digestive tract. the prognosis of GC patients is still not optimistic. Apoptosis-related genes (ARGs) plays an important role in the development, invasion, metastasis and drug resistance of GC. Therefore, assessing the interaction between ARGs and the prognosis of GC patients may help identify specific biomarkers.Methods: Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified by integrating gene expression profiling analyses from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) GC cohort and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) Database. Then, a risk score model was built based on Kaplan-Meier (K-M), least absolute shrinkage and selector operation (LASSO), and multivariate Cox regression analyses. Another cohort (GSE84426) was used for external validation. By combining risk scores with clinical variables, a nomogram was constructed to predict the prognosis of GC patients. Results: We screened 39 DEGS and established a three-gene signature(CAV1、F2、LUM) based on 161 ARGs. In addition, three-gene signature was identified as an independent factor in predicting the prognosis of GC patients and validated in an external independent cohort. Finally, we developed a nomogram that can be applied to clinical practice.Conclusions: Our study established a three-gene signature of GC based on ARGs that has reference significance for in-depth research on the apoptosis mechanism of GC and the exploration of new clinical treatment strategies.