Identification of potential prognostic ceRNA module biomarkers in patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Accumulating evidence suggested that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) can function as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) to interact with other RNA transcripts and ceRNAs perturbation play important roles in cancer initiation and progression including pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAAD). In this study, we constructed a PAAD-specific hallmark gene-related ceRNA network (HceNet) using paired genome-wide expression profiles of mRNA, lncRNA and miRNA and regulatory relationships between them. Based on “ceRNA hypothesis”, we analyzed the characteristics of HceNet and identified a ceRNA module comprising of 29 genes (12 lncRNAs, two miRNAs and 15 mRNAs) as potential prognostic biomarkers related to overall survival of patients with PAAD. The prognostic value of ceRNA module biomarkers was further validated in the train (Hazard Ratio (HR) =1.661, 95% CI: 1.275–2.165, p<1.00e-4), test (HR=1.546, 95% CI: 1.238-1.930, p<1.00e-4), and entire (HR=1.559, 95% CI: 1.321-1.839, p<1.00e-4) datasets. Our study provides candidate prognostic biomarkers for PAAD and increases our understanding of ceRNA-related regulatory mechanism in PAAD pathogenesis.