Ferroptosis-related gene signature and clinical prognostic factors as prognostic marker for colon adenocarcinoma.

AIM

To build a ferroptosis-related prognostic model for patients with colon adenocarcinoma (COAD).

METHODS

COAD expression profiles from The Cancer Genome Atlas were used as the training set and GSE39582 from Gene Expression Omnibus as the validation set. Differentially expressed ferroptosis-related genes between patients with COAD and normal controls were screened, followed by tumor subtype exploration based on ferroptosis-related gene expression levels. A ferroptosis score (FS) model was constructed using least absolute shrinkage and selection operator penalized Cox analysis. Based on FS, patients were subgrouped into high- and low-risk subgroups and overall survival was predicted. The potential prognostic value of the FS model and the clinical characteristics were investigated using receiver operating characteristic curves.

RESULTS

Twenty-four differentially expressed ferroptosis-related genes were identified, four of which (, , , and ) were included in the prognostic signature. Moreover, age, pathological T stage, and tumor recurrence were independent prognostic factors for COAD. The FS model combined with three independent prognostic factors showed the best prognostic value (The Cancer Genome Atlas: area under the curve = 0.897; GSE39582: area under the curve = 0.858).

CONCLUSION

The novel prognostic model for patients with COAD constructed by pairing the FS model with three important independent prognostic factors showed promising clinical predictive value.