Establishment and Analysis of a Prognostic Model of Autophagy-Related lncRNAs in ESCA

Abstract

Esophageal cancer (ESCA) is a malignant tumor of the upper gastrointestinal tract, with a high mortality rate and poor prognosis. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) play a role in the malignant progression of tumors by regulating autophagy. This study is aimed at establishing a prognostic model of autophagy-related lncRNAs in ESCA and provide a theoretical basis to determine potential therapeutic targets for ESCA. The transcriptome expression profiles were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We identified autophagy-related mRNAs and lncRNAs in ESCA using differential expression analysis and the Human Autophagy Database (HADb). Four differentially expressed autophagy-related lncRNAs with a prognostic value were identified using Cox regression and survival analyses. Furthermore, the combination of the selected lncRNAs was able to predict the prognosis of patients with ESCA more accurately than any of the four lncRNAs individually. Finally, we constructed a coexpression network of autophagy-related mRNAs and lncRNAs. This study showed that autophagy-related lncRNAs play an important role in the occurrence and development of ESCA and could become a new target for the diagnosis and treatment of this disease.