A three microRNA‐based prognostic signature for small cell lung cancer overall survival

BACKGROUND: Small-cell lung cancer (SCLC) is one of the most aggressive cancers with mechanisms far from understood. OBJECTIVE: We proposed to identify valuable prognostic signature for SCLC prognosis prediction. METHODS: microRNA (miRNA) expression profiles of 42 SCLC patients were acquired from the Gene Expression Omnibus. miRNAs that significantly associated with SCLC overall survival (OS-relevant) were identified through univariate Cox regression analysis followed by random survival forest analysis for identification of more reliable miRNA signature. RESULTS: Eleven OS-relevant miRNAs were obtained, and hsa-miR-194, hsa-miR-608, and hsa-miR-9 were further refined through RFS. A formula composed of the three miRNAs' expression values weighted by their multivariate Cox regression coefficients was constructed, and based on which, SCLC patients with longer OS could be well distinguished from those with shorter OS. CONCLUSIONS: This study should provide a valuable clue for SCLC prognosis evaluation.