Upregulated necroptosis-pathway-associated genes are unfavorable prognostic markers in low-grade glioma and glioblastoma multiforme.

BACKGROUND

Glioma accounts for 70% of primary brain malignancies in adults with unfavorable prognoses. In the past decades, much efforts have been invested to identify better biomarkers for predicting prognoses. Recently, necroptosis has been reported as a specialized pathway of programmed necrosis. Moreover, regulators of necroptosis-pathway-associated genes (, and ) were reported to be related to prognoses of many types of tumors. However, the prognostic value of these genes in diffuse glioma including low-grade glioma (LGG) and glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) remains unknown.

METHODS

An online tool-Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) (http://gepia.cancer-pku.cn/) was used to analyze different expression of necroptosis-pathway-associated genes between tumor and normal tissue, correlation between , and , the relationship between necroptosis-pathway-associated genes and prognosis [overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS)] in LGG and GBM. The median expression of , and was used to divide patients into high- versus low-expression group. All graphic presentations were drawn by Gepia database.

RESULTS

Expression of and were significantly higher in tumor tissue of GBM as compared with normal tissue. A moderate correlation between and was demonstrated in both LGG (R =0.79) and GBM (R =0.79). In LGG, higher expression of , , and were associated with poor OS and DFS with HR values of 2.2, 2, 1.9 for OS and 1.7, 1.8, 1.6 for DFS, respectively. In GBM, only a higher expression of was associated with worse OS and DFS with HR values of 1.5 and 1.6, respectively.

CONCLUSIONS

Regulators of necroptosis-pathway-associated genes appear to have a potential to serve as biomarkers of prognosis in both LGG and GBM.