Establishment and validation of a prognostic model based on HRR-related lncRNAs in colon adenocarcinoma

Colon cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer-related death, and its 5-year survival rate is very low. Homologous recombination repair (HRR) is deficient in most colon cancer. Some long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) participate in tumorigenesis of colon cancer through the HRR pathway. We aim to establish a prognostic model based on the HRR-related lncRNAs, expecting to provide a new strategy for precision treatment development in colon cancer.

Pearson's correlation was used to identify the HRR-related prognostic lncRNAs in the TCGA-COAD cohort. The TCGA-COAD cohort was randomized into the training set and the testing set. LASSO Cox regression was used to establish the model which was analyzed in the training set and validated in the testing set and the entire TCGA-COAD cohort. Finally, we explored the potential biological function of our model.

A prognostic model was established based on nineteen HRR-related lncRNAs in the training set. COAD patients were scored by the uniform formula and divided into high-risk and low-risk groups based on the median risk score. Patients with high-risk scores indicated poor prognosis in the training set, and the result was confirmed in the testing set and the entire TCGA-COAD cohort (all p < 0.01). Multivariable analysis suggested that our model was an independent factor for overall survival in COAD. The area under the curve (AUC) and C-index indicated that our model had better predictive efficiency than other indicators in the TCGA-COAD cohort. Functional enrichment analysis suggested that our model was associated with the MAPK pathway in COAD. Besides, our model was positively correlated with the HRD scores.

A new prognostic model was established based on nineteen HRR-related lncRNAs which had excellent predictive efficiency on the prognosis of COAD. This prognostic model may provide a new strategy for prognostic prediction of COAD patients.