Identification of Enhancer RNA CDK6-AS1 as a Potential Novel Prognostic Biomarker in Gastric Cancer

Background: This study aimed to confirm the role of enhancer RNAs (eRNAs) in gastric cancer and their clinical utility. Methods: We used Cox survival and relevance analysis to identify the candidate eRNAs in gastric cancer and performed Gene Ontology and Reactome pathway enrichment to determine the potential functions of eRNAs. Correlation between eRNA, tumor-infiltrating immune cells, and drug sensitivity was then analyzed. Results: CDK6-AS1, a long non-coding RNA cyclin-dependent kinase 6, may serve as a poor potential prognostic biomarker candidate in gastric cancer with a positive correlation with its target gene CDK6. The low CDK6-AS1 expression group showed more frequent mutated driver genes than the high expression group. Moreover, CDK6-AS1 is involved in a key oncogenic pathway of the cell cycle and RNA transcription. CDK6-AS1 also shows dysregulations and associations with prognosis at the pan-cancer level. This eRNA may also be associated with immune cell infiltration and drug sensitivity. Conclusion: CDK6-AS1 may be a potential prognostic biomarker and chemotherapeutic drug sensitivity predictor in gastric cancer.