Multi-Omics Integration Reveals a Competitive Endogenous RNAs Network for the Identification of Progression Biomarkers and the Stratification of Patients Diagnosed With Nephroblastoma

Specific types of nephroblastoma (Wilms' tumor, WT) are known to associate with poor overall survival. Emerging experimental evidence has demonstrated that competitive endogenous RNA (ceRNA) networks have important roles in regulating cancer occurrence, but the roles of ceRNAs in regulating the WT progression and the patient outcomes remain unclear. Using the multi-omics data of 132 WT patients collected from TARGET database, an integration analysis pipeline was performed to construct a highly reliable ceRNA network. As results, a total of 147 nodes (116 mRNAs, 15 miRNAs, and 16 lncRNAs) were identified and used to explore the underlying mechanism for WT progression. WGCNA analysis further identified several prognostic molecules, including hsa-mir-93, LINC00087 and RP5-1086K13, that significantly associated with the overall survival rate. And, enrichment analysis verified the participation of these molecules in tumor-related pathways, such as those controlling autophagy and cadherin-mediated adhesion. Importantly, the WT patients were classified into three categories according to the ceRNA network, which significantly correlated with the overall survival. In conclusion, the ceRNA network could be a promising tool to further validate the prognostic biomarkers and categories of patients diagnosed with WT.