A novel five‐gene signature predicts overall survival of patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common public health challenges, worldwide. Because of molecular complexity and tumor heterogeneity, there are no effective predictive models for prognosis of HCC. This underlines the unmet need for accurate prognostic models for HCC. Analysis of GSE14520 data from gene omnibus (GEO) database identified multiple differentially expressed mRNAs (DEMs) between HCC and normal tissues. After randomly stratifying the patients into the training and testing groups, we performed univariate, lasso, and multivariable Cox regression analyses to delineate the prognostic gene signature in training set. We then used Kaplan–Meier plot, time‐dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC), multivariable Cox regression analysis of clinical information, nomogram, and decision curve analysis (DCA) to evaluate the predictive and overall survival value of a novel five‐gene signature (CNIH4, SOX4, SPP1, SORBS2, and CCL19) within and across sets, separately and combined. We also validated the prognostic value of the five‐gene signature using The Cancer Genome Atlas—Liver Hepatocellular Carcinoma (TCGA‐LIHC), GSE54236 and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) sets. Multivariable Cox regression analysis revealed that the five‐gene signature and tumor node metastasis (TNM) stage were independent prognostic factors for overall survival of HCC patients in GSE14520 and TCGA‐LIHC. Combining TNM stage clinical pathological parameters and nomogram greatly improved the prognosis prediction of HCC. Further gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed enrichment of KEGG pathways related to cell cycle in the high‐risk group and histidine metabolism in the low‐risk group. Finally, all these five mRNAs are overexpressed between 12 pairs of HCC and adjacent normal tissues by quantitative real‐time PCR validation. In brief, a five‐gene prognostic signature and a nomogram were identified and constructed, respectively, and further validated for their HCC prognostic value. The five‐gene risk score together with TNM stage models could aid in rationalizing customized therapies in HCC patients.