A seven‐long noncoding RNA signature predicts relapse in patients with early‐stage lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) has been increasingly reported to play crucial roles in cancer development. In this study, we aim to develop a lncRNA-based signature to predict the relapse of early-stage (stage I-II) lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). METHODS: With a lncRNA-mining strategy, lncRNA expression profiles of three LUAD cohorts were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus database. A risk score model was established based on the lncRNAs expression from training set (GSE31210, n = 204) and further validated in two independent testing sets (GSE50081, n = 124; and GSE30219, n = 84). The potential signaling pathways modulated by the prognostic lncRNAs were explored using bioinformatics analysis. RESULTS: In the training set, seven lncRNAs were identified to be significantly correlated with the relapse-free survival (RFS) of early-stage LUAD, and were then aggregated to form a seven-lncRNA prognostic signature to classify patients into high-risk and low-risk groups. Individuals of training set in the high-risk group exhibited a poorer RFS than those in the low-risk group (HR: 7.574, 95% CI: 4.165-13.775; P < 0.001). The similar prognostic powers of the seven-lncRNA signature were also achieved in the two independent testing sets and in stratified analysis. Multivariate Cox regression indicated that the prognostic value of seven-lncRNA signature was independent of other clinical features. Functional enrichment analysis found that the seven-lncRNA signature may be involved in biological pathways such as cell cycle, DNA replication, and p53 signaling pathway. CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that the seven-lncRNA signature may be an innovative biomarker to predict the relapse of early-stage LUAD.