Department of Anesthesiology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Wenzhou, China.
Department of Emergency Medicine, Yinzhou Second Hospital, Ningbo, Zhejiang, China.
Biomed Res Int. 2021 May 15;2021:5573628. doi: 10.1155/2021/5573628. eCollection 2021.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most malignant tumors of the digestive system, and its treatment has rarely progressed for the last two decades. Studies on m6A regulators for the past few years have seemingly provided a novel approach for malignant tumor therapy. m6A-related factors may be potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets. This research is focused on the gene characteristics and clinical values of m6A regulators in predicting prognosis in pancreatic cancer.
In our study, we obtained gene expression profiles with copy number variation (CNV) data and clinical characteristic data of 186 patients with pancreatic cancer from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) portal. Then, we determined the alteration of m6a regulators and their correlation with clinicopathological features using the log-rank tests, Cox regression model, and chi-square test. Additionally, we validated the prognostic value of m6A regulators in the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC).
The results suggested that pancreatic cancer patients with CNV were associated with worse overall survival and disease-free survival than those with diploid genes. Additionally, upregulation of the writer gene had a positive correlation with the activation of AKT pathways in the TCGA database.
Our study not only demonstrated genetic characteristic changes of m6A-related genes in pancreatic cancer and found a strong relationship between the changes of and poor prognosis but also provided a novel therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer therapy.
胰腺癌是消化系统最恶性的肿瘤之一，在过去的二十年中，其治疗方法鲜有进展。近年来对 m6A 调节剂的研究似乎为恶性肿瘤治疗提供了一种新方法。m6A 相关因子可能是潜在的生物标志物和治疗靶点。本研究聚焦于 m6A 调节剂在预测胰腺癌预后中的基因特征和临床价值。
本研究从 TCGA 数据库中获取了 186 例胰腺癌患者的基因表达谱、拷贝数变异（CNV）数据和临床特征数据。然后，我们使用对数秩检验、Cox 回归模型和卡方检验确定 m6A 调节剂的改变及其与临床病理特征的相关性。此外，我们在国际癌症基因组联盟（ICGC）中验证了 m6A 调节剂的预后价值。
结果表明，与二倍体基因相比，CNV 患者的胰腺癌患者总生存率和无病生存率更差。此外，在 TCGA 数据库中，作家基因的上调与 AKT 通路的激活呈正相关。
本研究不仅展示了胰腺癌中 m6A 相关基因的遗传特征变化，发现了 变化与不良预后之间的强烈关系，还为胰腺癌治疗提供了一个新的治疗靶点。
