Discovered differentially expressed lncRNA AC010973.2 can act as a diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for colon adenocarcinoma

BACKGROUND: The identification of prognostic genes that can distinguish the prognostic risks of cancer patients remains a significant challenge. Recent studies show that long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) might act as prognostic biomarkers in a variety of cancers. This study aimed to identify and assess a prognostic lncRNA signature in patients with colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). METHODS: We downloaded expression profiles and corresponding clinicopathological data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. We selected samples with lncRNA expression data and relevant clinical prognostic data for subsequent analysis. The association between lncRNA and prognostic function was analyzed by Cox regression analysis. The potential biofunctions of target lncRNA were investigated through bioinformatic analysis. RESULTS: LncRNAs expression profiles and corresponding clinicopathological data of 480 COAD patients and 41 normal samples were obtained from TCGA database. A multivariate Cox analysis model was used to identify the lncRNA signature. AC010973.2 lncRNA was found to be significantly related to the survival of COAD patients. The area under the curve (0.758) and the C-index (0.753) further confirmed the prediction accuracy of our model. Through nucleic acid sequence comparison and literature search, we found that the homologous host gene SLC4A2 of AC010973.2 is significantly related to COAD. CONCLUSIONS: We provide here a new biomarker for COAD diagnosis and a new direction for further research on the pathogenesis of COAD.