Construction and validation of a metabolic risk model predicting prognosis of colon cancer

Metabolic genes have played a significant role in tumor development and prognosis. In this study, we constructed a metabolic risk model to predict the prognosis of colon cancer based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and validated the model by Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). We extracted 753 metabolic genes and identified 139 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from TCGA database. Then we conducted univariate cox regression analysis and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator Cox regression analysis to identify prognosis-related genes and construct the metabolic risk model. An eleven-gene prognostic model was constructed after 1000 resamples. The gene signature has been proved to have an excellent ability to predict prognosis by Kaplan–Meier analysis, time-dependent receiver operating characteristic, risk score, univariate and multivariate cox regression analysis based on TCGA. Then we validated the model by Kaplan–Meier analysis and risk score based on GEO database. Finally, we performed a weighted gene co-expression network analysis and protein–protein interaction network on DEGs, and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes pathways and Gene Ontology enrichment analyses were conducted. The results of functional analyses showed that most significantly enriched pathways focused on metabolism, especially glucose and lipid metabolism pathways.