High expression of WDR1 in primary glioblastoma is associated with poor prognosis

Primary glioblastoma always has a fatal outcome despite maximal therapy. Identification and validation of prognostic biomarkers and novel therapeutics will be potentially powerful to transform the care of glioblastoma patients. In this study, we constructed Affymetrix gene microarrays with 14 glioma samples to screen for genes with potential prognostic value by hieratical clustering, and 83 genes including WD-repeat containing protein 1 (WDR1) were filtered out. WDR1 is a major co-factor collaborating with cofilin in actin cytoskeletal dynamics, which may play vital role in glioma proliferation and invasion. Further, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database was utilizedto verify the expression of WDR1 and its prognostic implicationin 528 glioblastoma specimens. Survival and correlation analyses showed WDR1 expression was highly expressed and related to the prognosis of glioblastoma and the expression of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3), respectively (p<0.05). Finally, WDR1 expression was detected in our large cohort containing 258 glioma patients (including 100 primary glioblastomas).And univariate and multivariate analyses confirmed that high WDR1 expression was an independent prognostic factor for a shorter progression-free survival (PFS) and overall survival (OS) in primary glioblastoma patients at our center [hazard ratio (HR)=1.844, p=0.005 and HR=2.085, p=0.001, respectively]. Together, WDR1 is significantly over-expressed in primary glioblastoma. High expression of WDR1 can independently predict unfavorable clinical outcome for primary glioblastoma patients. This study identifies a novel prognostic biomarker and a potential therapeutic target for glioblastoma.