A three-gene signature for prognosis in patients with MGMT promoter-methylated glioblastoma

Glioblastoma is the most malignant tumor and has high mortality rate. The methylated prompter of MGMT results in chemotherapy sensitivity for these patients. However, there are still other factors that affected the prognosis for the glioblastoma patients with similar MGMT methylation status. We developed a signature with three genes screened from the whole genome mRNA expression profile from Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) and RNAseq data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Patients with MGMT methylation in low risk group had longer survival than those in high risk group (median overall survival 1074 vs. 372 days; P = 0.0033). Moreover, the prognostic value of the signature was significant difference in cohorts stratified by MGMT methylation and chemotherapy (P=0.0473), while there is no significant difference between low and high risk group or unmethylated MGMT patients without chemotherapy. Multivariate analysis indicated that the risk score was an independent prognosis factor (P = 0.004). In conclusion, our results showed that the signature has prognostic value for patients with MGMT promoter-methylated glioblastomas based on bioinformatics analysis.