Development of an autophagy-related gene expression signature for prognosis prediction in prostate cancer patients

BACKGROUND: Prostate cancer (PCa) is one of the most prevalent cancers that occur in men worldwide. Autophagy-related genes (ARGs) may play an essential role in multiple biological processes of prostate cancer. However, ARGs expression signature has rarely been used to investigate the association between autophagy and prognosis in PCa. This study aimed to identify and assess prognostic ARGs signature to predict overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS) in PCa patients. METHODS: First, a total of 234 autophagy-related genes were obtained from The Human Autophagy Database. Then, differentially expressed ARGs were identified in prostate cancer patients based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis was performed to screen hub prognostic ARGs for overall survival and disease-free survival, and the prognostic model was constructed. Finally, the correlation between the prognostic model and clinicopathological parameters was further analyzed, including age, T status, N status, and Gleason score. RESULTS: The OS-related prognostic model was constructed based on the five ARGs (FAM215A, FDD, MYC, RHEB, and ATG16L1) and significantly stratified prostate cancer patients into high- and low-risk groups in terms of OS (HR = 6.391, 95% CI = 1.581– 25.840, P < 0.001). The area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) of the prediction model was 0.84. The OS-related prediction model values were higher in T3-4 than in T1-2 (P = 0.008), and higher in Gleason score > 7 than ≤ 7 (P = 0.015). In addition, the DFS-related prognostic model was constructed based on the 22 ARGs (ULK2, NLRC4, MAPK1, ATG4D, MAPK3, ATG2A, ATG9B, FOXO1, PTEN, HDAC6, PRKN, HSPB8, P4HB, MAP2K7, MTOR, RHEB, TSC1, BIRC5, RGS19, RAB24, PTK6, and NRG2), with AUC of 0.85 (HR = 7.407, 95% CI = 4.850–11.320, P < 0.001), which were firmly related to T status (P < 0.001), N status (P = 0.001), and Gleason score (P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Our ARGs based prediction models are a reliable prognostic and predictive tool for overall survival and disease-free survival in prostate cancer patients.