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Abstract Background Oxidative stress plays an important role in the progression of various types of tumors. However, its role in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) has seldom been explored. This study aimed to discover prognostic markers associated with oxidative stress in ESCC to improve the prediction of prognosis and help in the selection of effective immunotherapy for patients. Results A consensus cluster was constructed using 14 prognostic differentially expressed oxidative stress-related genes (DEOSGs) that were remarkably related to the prognosis of patients with ESCC. The infiltration levels of neutrophils, plasma cells, and activated mast cells, along with immune score, stromal score, and estimated score, were higher in cluster 1 than in cluster 2. A prognostic signature based on 10 prognostic DEOSGs was devised that could evaluate the prognosis of patients with ESCC. Calculated risk score proved to be an independent clinical prognostic factor in the training, testing, and entire sets. P53 signaling pathway was highly enriched in the high-risk group. The calculated risk score was positively related to the infiltration levels of resting mast cells, memory B cells, and activated natural killer (NK) cells and negatively associated with the infiltration levels of M1 and M2 macrophages. The relationship between clinical characteristics and risk score has not been certified. The half-maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) values for sorafenib and gefitinib were lower for patients in the low-risk group. Conclusion Our prognostic signature based on 10 prognostic DEOSGs could predict the disease outcomes of patients with ESCC and had strong clinical value. Our study improves the understanding of oxidative stress in tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) and provides insights for developing improved and efficient immunotherapy strategies.

Oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains a clinically challenging disease with high morbidity rates and poor prognosis. ESCC is also the most common pathological type of oesophageal cancer (EC) in China. Ras-related genes are one of the most frequently mutated gene families in cancer and regulate tumour development and progression. Given this, we investigated the Ras-related gene expression profiles and their values in ESCC prognosis, using data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. We found that we could identify three distinct oesophageal cancer clusters based on their unique expression profile for 11 differentially expressed Ras-related genes with each of these demonstrating some prognostic value when, evaluated using univariate Cox analysis. We then used multivariate Cox analysis to identify relevant independent prognostic indicators and used these to build a new prognostic prediction model for oesophageal cancer patients using these three Ras-related genes. These evaluations produced an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.932. We found that our Ras-related signatures could also act as independent factors in ESCC prognosis and that patients with low Ras scores showed a higher overall expression levels of various immune checkpoint genes, including TNFSF4, TNFRSF8, TNFRSF9, NRP1, CD28, CD70, CD200, CD276, METTL16, METTL14, ZC3H13, YTHDF3, VIRMA, FTO, and RBM15, as well as a higher CSMD3, FLG, DNAH5, MUC4, PLCO, EYS, and ZNF804B mutation rates, and better sensitivity to drugs such as erlotinib, paclitaxel, and gefitinib. In conclusion, we were able to use the unique expression profiles of several Ras-related genes to produce a novel disease signature which might facilitate improved prognosis in ESCC, providing new insight into both diagnosis and treatment in these cancers.

Oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains a clinically challenging disease with high morbidity rates and poor prognosis. ESCC is also the most common pathological type of oesophageal cancer (EC) in China. Ras-related genes are one of the most frequently mutated gene families in cancer and regulate tumour development and progression. Given this, we investigated the Ras-related gene expression profiles and their values in ESCC prognosis, using data from the Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) databases. We found that we could identify three distinct oesophageal cancer clusters based on their unique expression profile for 11 differentially expressed Ras-related genes with each of these demonstrating some prognostic value when, evaluated using univariate Cox analysis. We then used multivariate Cox analysis to identify relevant independent prognostic indicators and used these to build a new prognostic prediction model for oesophageal cancer patients using these three Ras-related genes. These evaluations produced an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.932. We found that our Ras-related signatures could also act as independent factors in ESCC prognosis and that patients with low Ras scores showed a higher overall expression levels of various immune checkpoint genes, including TNFSF4, TNFRSF8, TNFRSF9, NRP1, CD28, CD70, CD200, CD276, METTL16, METTL14, ZC3H13, YTHDF3, VIRMA, FTO, and RBM15, as well as a higher CSMD3, FLG, DNAH5, MUC4, PLCO, EYS, and ZNF804B mutation rates, and better sensitivity to drugs such as erlotinib, paclitaxel, and gefitinib. In conclusion, we were able to use the unique expression profiles of several Ras-related genes to produce a novel disease signature which might facilitate improved prognosis in ESCC, providing new insight into both diagnosis and treatment in these cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Some significant differences exist between the outcomes of left‐ and right‐sided colon cancer patients. The presence of nodal metastases is a critical prognostic factor, especially in the absence of distant metastasis. Our research studied the lymph nodes status of left‐ and right‐sided colon cancer patients to determine the influence of this factor on prognosis. Methods: Our data were obtained from the Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) database. We used the chi‐square test to analyze the clinicopathological characteristics. The X‐tile program was adopted to acquire optimal cutoff points of lymph node index. Kaplan–Meier curves were used to analyze prognosis and multivariate Cox regression models were performed to identify the independent factors associated with survival. Nomograms were built to predict the overall survival of patients, Harrell's C‐index and calibration plots were used to validate the nomograms. Results: The study included 189,941 patients with colon cancer without metastasis (left 69,885, right 120,056) between 2004 and 2015. There are more patients with adequate examined lymph nodes in right‐sided. Lymph node status in patients with right colon cancer has a more significant impact on the risk of death. LODDS (C‐index: 0.583; AIC: 6875.4) was used to assess lymph node status. The nomograms showed that lymph node status was the main factor to predict the outcome in right‐sided colon patients. Conclusions: The influence of lymph node status on predicting prognosis is significantly different between patients with left and right colon cancer without metastasis. The tumor site needs to be considered when lymph node status is used to assess the outcome of patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

aimed at investigating the clinical significance and biological function of ubiquitination factor E4B (UBE4B) in human renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Methods: 19 paired clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) tumor samples and the matched neighboring non-tumor samples were used to detect the expression of UBE4B in RCC tumor by Western blotting and RT-qPCR. UBE4B expression was also detected in 151 ccRCC paraffin-embedded tumor samples by using immunohistochemistry. Overall survival (OS) in different UBE4B expression groups were compared with Log rank test. The prognostic value of UBE4B expression in OS was evaluated with the univariate and multivariate Cox regression models. UBE4B was knocked down by small interfering RNA (siRNA) technology, and the effect of UBE4B on cell proliferation, colony formation, metastasis, apoptosis and cell cycle of RCC cells were examined in vitro. Results: Both protein and mRNA levels of UBE4B were up-regulated in ccRCC tumor tissues in contrast to the corresponding adjacent nontumor ones. UBE4B expression was positively associated with tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage and distant metastasis in ccRCC patients. Survival analyses indicated that low expression of UBE4B was associated with increased OS in ccRCC patients. Functional analyses demonstrated that siRNA silencing of UBE4B expression in SKRC39 and ACHN cells further reduced the growth, motility and invasiveness of RCC cells. Moreover, siRNA silencing of UBE4B in the RCC cell lines did not induce apoptosis, and an increase in the cell population was observed during the G0/G1 phase of the cell cycle. Conclusion: UBE4B might act as an oncogene in regulating RCC development. Therefore it could be served as an effective indicator to predict OS and a potential biomarker for targeted therapy of RCC patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study aims to investigate the role of long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) GAS5 in the diagnosis and prognosis of patients suffering from thyroid cancer (TC). A total of 212 patients with TC and 61 patients with benign thyroid tumor were enrolled in the study. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) was applied to detect the lncRNA GAS5 expression in TC and benign tumor tissues. All TC patients were categorized into high-risk and low-risk groups according to the MACIS, AGES and AMES prognostic scoring system. A 5-year follow-up was conducted in order to determine the disease free survival (DFS) rates and overall survival (OS) rates. The associations between lncRNA GAS5 expression and prognosis of TC patients were analyzed by The Kaplan-Meier survival curves and the Cox regression models. There was a decrease in the lncRNA GAS5 expression in TC tissues in comparison to benign tumor tissues. Expression of lncRNA GAS5 showed significant association with tumor node metastasis (TNM) staging, lymph node metastasis and the multiple cancer foci of TC. AMES high-risk patients showed a decreased expression of lncRNA GAS5 expression than the AMES low-risk patients. The AGES and MACIS high-risk patients showed lower lncRNA GAS5 expression than low-risk patients. The survival rate of TC patients with high lncRNA GAS5 expression was higher than that of TC patients with low lncRNA GAS5 expression during the DFS and OS periods. Cox regression analysis indicated that lncRNA GAS5 expression, TNM staging, lymph node metastasis and multiple cancer foci were independent risk factors for poor prognosis in TC patients. LncRNA GAS5 may be closely related to the diagnosis and prognosis of TC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]