BACH1: A Potential Predictor of Survival in Early-Stage Lung Adenocarcinoma

PURPOSE: Recent researches showed the vital role of BACH1 in promoting the metastasis of lung cancer. We aimed to explore the value of BACH1 in predicting the overall survival (OS) of early-stage (stages I-II) lung adenocarcinoma. Patients and Methods. Lung adenocarcinoma cases were screened from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Functional enrichment analysis was performed to obtain the biological mechanisms of BACH1. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to identify the difference of biological pathways between high- and low-BACH1 groups. Univariate and multivariate COX regression analysis had been used to screen prognostic factors, which were used to establish the BACH1 expression-based prognostic model in the TCGA dataset. The C-index and time-dependent AUC curve were used to evaluate predictive power of the model. External validation of prognostic value was performed in two independent datasets from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Decision analysis curve was finally used to evaluate clinical usefulness of the BACH1-based model beyond pathologic stage alone. RESULTS: BACH1 was an independent prognostic factor for lung adenocarcinoma. High-expression BACH1 cases had worse OS. BACH1-based prognostic model showed an ideal C-index and t-AUC and validated by two GEO datasets, independently. More importantly, the BACH1-based model indicated positive clinical applicability by DCA curves. CONCLUSION: Our research confirmed that BACH1 was an important predictor of prognosis in early-stage lung adenocarcinoma. The higher the expression of BACH1, the worse OS of the patients.