ARMCX Family Gene Expression Analysis and Potential Prognostic Biomarkers for Prediction of Clinical Outcome in Patients with Gastric Carcinoma.

Armadillo gene subfamily members (ARMCX1-6) are well-known to regulate protein-protein interaction involved in nuclear transport, cellular connection, and transcription activation. Moreover, ARMCX signals on cell pathways also implicated in carcinogenesis and tumor progression. However, little is known about the associations of the ARMCX subfamily members with gastric carcinoma. This study investigated the prognostic value of ARMCX subfamily mRNA expression levels with the prognosis of gastric carcinoma (GC). We retrieved the data of a total of 351 GC patients from TCGA database. Survival and gene set enrichment analyses were employed to explore the predictive value and underlying mechanism of ARMCX genes in GC. The multivariate survival analysis revealed that individually low expressions of ARMCX1 (adjusted = 0.006, HR = 0.620, CI = 0.440 - 0.874) and ARMCX2 (adjusted = 0.005, HR = 0.610, 95%CI = 0.432-0.861) were related to preferable overall survival (OS). The joint-effects analysis shown that combinations of low level expression of ARMCX1 and ARMCX2 were correlated with favorable OS (adjusted P = 0.003, HR = 0.563, 95%CI = 0.384-0.825). ARMCX1 and ARMCX2 were implicated in WNT and NF-kappaB pathways, and biological processes including cell cycle, apoptosis, RNA modification, DNA replication, and damage response. Our results suggest that mRNA expression levels of ARMCX subfamily are potential prognostic markers of GC.