Prognostic value of a five-lncRNA signature in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Background: The aim of this study was to identify prognostic long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and develop a multi-lncRNA signature for suvival prediction in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). Methods: The clinical and gene expression data from Gene Expression Omnibus database (GSE53624, n=119) were obtianed as training set. A total of 98 paired ESCC tumor and normal tissues were detected by RNA sequencing and used as test set. Another 84 ESCC tissues were used for real-time quantitative PCR(qRT-PCR) and as an independent validation cohort. Survival analysis, Cox regression and Kaplan–Meier analysis were performed. Results: We screened a prognostic marker of ESCC from the GSE53624 dataset and named it as the five-lncRNA signature including AC007179.1, MORF4L2-AS1, RP11-488I20.9, RP13-30A9.2, RP4-735C1.6, which could classify patients into high- and low-risk groups with significantly different survival(median survival: 1.75 years vs. 4.01 years, log rank P<0.05). Then test dataset and validation dataset confirmed that the five-lncRNA signature can determine the prognosis of ESCC patients. Predictive independence of the prognostic marker was proved by multivariable Cox regression analyses in the three datasets (P<0.05). In addition, the signature was found to be better than TNM stage in terms of prognosis. Conclusion: The five-lncRNA signature could be a good prognostic biomarker for ESCC patients and has important clinical value.

lncRNA Profiles Enable Prognosis Prediction and Subtyping for Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

“…We also compared the prognostic ability of this model with those of having been reported prognostic biomarkers for ESCC. The results demonstrated that the 11-lncRNA signature had a higher fidelity than other signatures (Li et al, 2014;Mao et al, 2018;Zhang L. et al, 2020). The combination of cp-score and clinical characteristics improved the 5-year survival prediction, which could identify patients needing more aggressive treatment and surveillance.…”