LncRNAs KB-1836B5, LINC00566 and FAM27L are associated with the survival time of patients with ovarian cancer

Ovarian cancer (OvCa) is the most common gynecological malignancy type in the United States in 2014. Functions of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in OvCa have attracted increasing attention from researchers. The present study aimed to identify an lncRNA-based signature for survival prediction in patients with OvCa. On the basis of lncRNA expression profiles from The Cancer Genome Atlas data portal, differentially expressed lncRNAs (DELs) were selected from patients with good prognosis and poor prognosis in the training set, from which the prognostic lncRNAs were identified using univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses and used to construct a risk scoring system. The prognostic power of this lncRNA signature was tested in the training set and validated in validation dataset and entire dataset. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analyses were performed on the genes significantly associated with ≥1 prognostic lncRNA, and a total of 112 DELs were identified. LncRNAs KB-1836B5, long intergenic non-protein coding RNA 566 (LINC00566) and family with sequence similarity E5 (FAM27L) were determined to be prognostic lncRNAs. A three-lncRNAs signature-based risk scoring system was developed, which classified the patients from the training set into high-risk and low-risk groups with significantly different overall survival time. Risk stratification capability of the three-lncRNAs signature was validated in the validation and entire set. Multivariate Cox regression and data stratification analyses determined that the three-lncRNAs signature was independent of other clinical variables. GO and KEGG pathway enrichment analyses determined that the three prognostic lncRNAs may be involved in a number of metabolic processes and signaling pathways, including the mechanistic target of rapamycin signaling pathway, ubiquitin-mediated proteolysis, and complement and coagulation cascades pathways. In conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrated that the three-lncRNAs signature may be an independent biomarker for predicting prognosis in patients with OvCa.