The Development of Three-DNA Methylation Signature as a Novel Prognostic Biomarker in Patients with Colorectal Cancer

AIMS: The prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC) remains poor. This study aimed to develop and validate DNA methylation-based signature model to predict overall survival of CRC patients. METHODS: The methylation array data of CRC patients were retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. These patients were divided into training and validation datasets. A risk score model was established based on Kaplan-Meier and multivariate Cox regression analysis of training cohort and tested in validation cohort. RESULTS: Among total 14,626 DNA methylation candidate markers, we found that a three-DNA methylation signature (NR1H2, SCRIB, and UACA) was significantly associated with overall survival of CRC patients. Subgroup analysis indicated that this signature could predict overall survival of CRC patients regardless of age and gender. CONCLUSIONS: We established a prognostic model consisted of 3-DNA methylation sites, which could be used as potential biomarker to evaluate the prognosis of CRC patients.