Establishment of a prognosis predictive model for liver cancer based on expression of genes involved in the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway.

Background: The ubiquitin-proteasome pathway (UPP) has been proven to play important roles in cancer.

Aim: To investigate the prognostic significance of genes involved in the UPP and develop a predictive model for liver cancer based on the expression of these genes.

Methods: In this study, UPP-related E1, E2, E3, deubiquitylating enzyme, and proteasome gene sets were obtained from the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) database, aiming to screen the prognostic genes using univariate and multivariate regression analysis and develop a prognosis predictive model based on the Cancer Genome Atlas liver cancer cases.

Results: Five genes (including autophagy related 10, proteasome 20S subunit alpha 8, proteasome 20S subunit beta 2, ubiquitin specific peptidase 17 like family member 2, and ubiquitin specific peptidase 8) were proven significantly correlated with prognosis and used to develop a prognosis predictive model for liver cancer. Among training, validation, and Gene Expression Omnibus sets, the overall survival differed significantly between the high-risk and low-risk groups. The expression of the five genes was significantly associated with immunocyte infiltration, tumor stage, and postoperative recurrence. A total of 111 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified between the high-risk and low-risk groups and they were enriched in 20 and 5 gene ontology and KEGG pathways. Cell division cycle 20, Kelch repeat and BTB domain containing 11 and DDB1 and CUL4 associated factor 4 like 2 were the DEGs in the E3 gene set that correlated with survival.

Conclusion: We have constructed a prognosis predictive model in patients with liver cancer, which contains five genes that associate with immunocyte infiltration, tumor stage, and postoperative recurrence.