A four-gene signature predicts survival in clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma

// Jun Dai 1, * , Yuchao Lu 2, * , Jinyu Wang 3 , Lili Yang 4 , Yingyan Han 1 , Ying Wang 4 , Dan Yan 5 , Qiurong Ruan 4 , Shaogang Wang 2 1 Cancer Biology Research Center, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China 2 Department and Institute of Urology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China 3 Department of Orthopaedics and Traumatology, Prince of Wales Hospital, The Chinese University of Hong Kong SAR, Hong Kong, China 4 Institute of Pathology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China 5 Department of Pathology, Medical College, Wuhan University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China * These authors have contributed equally to this work Correspondence to: Qiurong Ruan, email: ruanqiurong@sina.com Shaogang Wang, email: sgwangtjm@163.com Keywords: ccRCC, prognosis, gene signature, tissue microarray, bioinformatics Received: April 26, 2016     Accepted: September 25, 2016     Published: October 13, 2016 ABSTRACT Clear-cell renal-cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common pathological subtype of renal cell carcinoma (RCC), accounting for about 80% of RCC. In order to find potential prognostic biomarkers in ccRCC, we presented a four-gene signature to evaluate the prognosis of ccRCC. SurvExpress and immunohistochemical (IHC) staining of tissue microarrays were used to analyze the association between the four genes and the prognosis of ccRCC. Data from TCGA dataset revealed a prognostic prompt function of the four genes (PTEN, PIK3C2A, ITPA and BCL3). Further discovery suggested that the four-gene signature predicted survival better than any of the four genes alone. Moreover, IHC staining demonstrated a consistent result with TCGA, indicating that the signature was an independent prognostic factor of survival in ccRCC. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis were conducted to verify the association of clinicopathological variables and the four genes’ expression levels with survival. The results further testified that the risk (four-gene signature) was an independent prognostic factors of both Overall Survival (OS) and Disease-free Survival (DFS) ( P <0.05). In conclusion, the four-gene signature was correlated with the survival of ccRCC, and therefore, may help to provide significant clinical implications for predicting the prognosis of patients.