Integrated Profiles Analysis Identified a Coding-Non-Coding Signature for Predicting Lymph Node Metastasis and Prognosis in Cervical Cancer

Abstract

Accumulating evidence has shown that lymph node metastasis (LNM) is not only an important prognostic factor but also an indicator of the need for postoperative chemoradiotherapy. Therefore, identifying risk factors or molecular markers related to LNM is critical for predicting the prognosis and guiding individualized treatment of patients with cervical cancer. In this study, we used the machine learning-based feature selection approach to identify eight optimal biomarkers from the list of 250 differentially expressed protein-coding genes and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in the TCGA cohort. Then a coding-non-coding signature (named CNC8SIG) was developed using the elastic-net logistic regression approach based on the expression levels of eight optimal biomarkers, which is useful in discriminating patients with LNM from those without LNM in the discovery cohort. The predictive performance of the CNC8SIG was further validated in two independent patient cohorts. Moreover, the CNC8SIG was significantly associated with patient’s survival in different patient cohorts. In silico functional analysis suggested that the CNC8SIG-associated mRNAs are enriched in known cancer-related biological pathways such as the Wnt signaling pathway, the Ras signaling pathway, Rap1 signaling pathway, and PI3K-Akt signaling pathway.

DNA Damage Repair-Related Genes Signature for Immune Infiltration and Outcome in Cervical Cancer

“…Gene expression and clinical data required for this study were obtained from TCGA database. In previous studies ( Shi et al, 2020 ; Zhang et al, 2020 ; Cao et al, 2021 ; Chen et al, 2021 ; Peng et al, 2021 ), many scholars used TGCA gene data to predict the prognosis of patients with cervical cancer. In our study, four DNA damage repair related genes (HAP1, MCM5, RNASEH2A, CETN2) were found to be significantly associated with prognosis and can be incorporated into the nomogram to predict prognosis stratification.…”

Overexpression of LINC00673 Promotes the Proliferation of Cervical Cancer Cells

“…Since then, a large number of reports have found that lncRNAs play important biological functions, and lncRNAs have a wide range of tissue expression profiles and strong tissue expression specificity. Multiple studies have found that lncRNAs play key roles in tumorigenesis and development, and several lncRNAs are differentially expressed in cancers, including cervical cancer (5)(6)(7)(8). For example, the lncRNA LINC00673 has a carcinogenic effect in breast cancer (9,10), lung cancer (11,12), and gastric cancer (13) and exerts a tumor suppressive effect in pancreatic cancer (14).…”