Establishment of the Prognostic Signature with Genes Related to G2/M Checkpoint in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of cancer mortality in the world. Prognostic indicators such as clinicopathological characteristics and single molecular signature are far from satisfactory in clinical practice. More and more researches have suggested that polygenic prognostic features could predict the prognosis of cancer more precisely than single genes nowadays. In this study, we performed gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) to identify the sets of TCGA hallmark genes. Univariate Cox regression analysis was used to select preliminary genes, and then multivariate Cox regression analysis was used to identify genes associated with overall survival (OS). We also used Kaplan-Meier analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis to validate the prognostic gene signature. Lastly, qRT-PCR was used to evaluate the expression of these genes in clinical samples, and immunohistochemical staining was performed to confirm the signature. A 12-gene signature was finally built and the risk score was significantly associated with the survival of the patients. Subsequent validation by qRT-PCR and immunohistochemical staining in clinical specimens confirmed the value of the risk score in predicting the prognosis. We developed a 12-gene signature that could predict the prognosis of HCC patients. This signature is of high precision and would help identifying subgroups of HCC patients with high or low risk of unfavorable survival.