Comprehensive investigation of a novel differentially expressed lncRNA expression profile signature to assess the survival of patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma

// Jiang-Hui Zeng 1, * , Liang Liang 2, * , Rong-Quan He 3 , Rui-Xue Tang 1 , Xiao-Yong Cai 2 , Jun-Qiang Chen 4 , Dian-Zhong Luo 1 , Gang Chen 1 1 Department of Pathology, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, P. R. China 2 Department of General Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University (West Branch), Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, P. R. China 3 Department of Medical Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, P. R. China 4 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University, Nanning, Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, P. R. China * These authors contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Dian-Zhong Luo, email: 13878802796@163.com Gang Chen, email: chen_gang_triones@163.com Keywords: lncRNA, COAD, READ, prognostic biomarker, survival Received: November 22, 2016      Accepted: January 24, 2017      Published: February 06, 2017 ABSTRACT Growing evidence has shown that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can serve as prospective markers for survival in patients with colorectal adenocarcinoma. However, most studies have explored a limited number of lncRNAs in a small number of cases. The objective of this study is to identify a panel of lncRNA signature that could evaluate the prognosis in colorectal adenocarcinoma based on the data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Altogether, 371 colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) patients with complete clinical data were included in our study as the test cohort. A total of 578 differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs) were observed, among which 20 lncRNAs closely related to overall survival (OS) in COAD patients were identified using a Cox proportional regression model. A risk score formula was developed to assess the prognostic value of the lncRNA signature in COAD with four lncRNAs (LINC01555, RP11-610P16.1, RP11-108K3.1 and LINC01207), which were identified to possess the most remarkable correlation with OS in COAD patients. COAD patients with a high-risk score had poorer OS than those with a low-risk score. The multivariate Cox regression analyses confirmed that the four-lncRNA signature could function as an independent prognostic indicator for COAD patients, which was largely mirrored in the validating cohort with rectal adenocarcinoma (READ) containing 158 cases. In addition, the correlative genes of LINC01555 and LINC01207 were enriched in the cAMP signaling and mucin type O-Glycan biosynthesis pathways. With further validation in the future, our study indicates that the four-lncRNA signature could serve as an independent biomarker for survival of colorectal adenocarcinoma.