A Reliable Prognostic Model for HCC Using Histological Grades and the Expression Levels of Related Genes

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common primary liver malignancy and is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. This study aimed to establish a reliable prognostic model for HCC using histological grades and the expression levels of related genes. The histological grade of a tumor provides prognostic information. The expression data of HCC samples were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We employed the univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses, as well as the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression to establish the prognostic model. After verification of the proposed model using data downloaded from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) database, we found that the model was highly reliable, and it was revealed that the prognosis in the high-risk group was significantly worse than that in the low-risk group. Next, we explored the correlation of RiskScore with patients’ clinicopathological characteristics, and we found that the RiskScore could be used as an independent prognostic factor, which further confirmed the reliability of our model. In summary, the proposed model could accurately predict the prognosis of HCC patients, assisting clinicians to study the roles of different histological grades of HCC.