A stable gene set for prediction of prognosis and efficacy of chemotherapy in gastric cancer

BACKGROUND: Gastric cancer (GC) is a primary reason for cancer death in the world. At present, GC has become a public health issue urgently to be solved to. Prediction of prognosis is critical to the development of clinical treatment regimens. This work aimed to construct the stable gene set for guiding GC diagnosis and treatment in clinic. METHODS: A public microarray dataset of TCGA providing clinical information was obtained. Dimensionality reduction was carried out by selection operator regression on the stable prognostic genes discovered through the bootstrap approach as well as survival analysis. FINDINGS: A total of 2 prognostic models were built, respectively designated as stable gene risk scores of OS (SGRS-OS) and stable gene risk scores of PFI (SGRS-PFI) consisting of 18 and 21 genes. The SGRS set potently predicted the overall survival (OS) along with progression-free interval (PFI) by means of univariate as well as multivariate analysis, using the specific risk scores formula. Relative to the TNM classification system, the SGRS set exhibited apparently higher predicting ability. Moreover, it was suggested that, patients who had increased SGRS were associated with poor chemotherapeutic outcomes. INTERPRETATION: The SGRS set constructed in this study potentially serves as the efficient approach for predicting GC patient survival and guiding their treatment. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12885-021-08444-w.