Prognostic Alternative mRNA Splicing in Adrenocortical Carcinoma

BACKGROUND: This paper aims to identify alternative RNA splicing landscape and its prognostic value in adrenocortical carcinoma. METHODS: The alternative splicing events data with corresponding clinical information data of 79 ACC patients were obtained from the Cancer Genome Atlas and SpliceSeq package. Prognosis-associated AS events by using univariate Cox regression analysis were selected. Gene functional enrichment analysis demonstrated the potential pathways enriched by survival-associated AS. Prognosis-related splicing events were submitted to develop moderate predictors using Lasso regression model. RESULTS: One thousand five survival-associated alternative splicing events were identified. The prognostic genes included ATXN2L, MEIS1, IKBKB, COX4I1. Functional enrichment analysis suggested that prognostic splicing events are associated with Wnt signaling pathway. A prediction model including 12 alternative splicing events was constructed by Lasso regression using train set. ROC analysis showed good performance of the prediction model in test set. Then, a nomogram integrating the clinical-pathological factors and riskscore was constructed for predicting 1‐ and 3‐year survival rate. CONCLUSION: Our data provide a comprehensive bioinformatics analysis of AS events in ACC, providing biomarkers for disease progression and a potentially rich source of novel therapeutic targets.