The expression characteristics and prognostic roles of autophagy-related genes in gastric cancer.

BACKGROUND

Autophagy is an evolutionally highly conserved process, accompanied by the dynamic changes of various molecules, which is necessary for the orderly degradation and recycling of cellular components. The aim of the study was to identify the role of autophagy-related () genes in the occurrence and development of gastric cancer (GC).

METHODS

Data from Oncomine dataset was used for the differential expression analysis between cancer and normal tissues. The association of genes expression with clinicopathologic indicators was evaluated by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Moreover, using the TCGA datasets, the prognostic role of genes was assessed. A nomogram was further built to assess the independent prognostic factors.

RESULTS

The expression of autophagy-related genes , , , , , , , , and showed differences between cancer and normal tissues. After verification, and were significantly associated with TNM stage. , , and were associated with T stage. and were low-expressed in patients without lymph node metastasis. No gene in autophagy pathway was associated with M stage. Further multivariate analysis suggested that and were independent prognostic factors for GC. The C-index of nomogram was 0.676 and the 95% CI was 0.628 to 0.724.

CONCLUSION

Our study provided a comprehensive illustration of genes expression characteristics in GC. Abnormal expressions of the ubiquitin-like conjugated system in genes plays a key role in the occurrence of GC. sub-system may play an important role in development and clinical outcome of GC. In the future, it is necessary to further elucidate the alterations of specific forms in order to provide insights for the discovery, diagnosis, or targeting for GC.