Long non-coding RNA-based signature for predicting prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), as one common type of non-coding RNAs, play a critical role in the tumorigenesis and development of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). In the current study, we aimed to assess the correlation between lncRNAs expression levels and prognosis of HCC patients. A lncRNA-based signature was also developed to predict the prognosis of HCC in this work. The lncRNAs expression profiles in tissues of tumor and para-carcinoma were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The lncRNA-based prognostic model was established by least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). The multivariate Cox-regression analysis was applied to identify the independent risk factors and subsequently developed a prognostic nomogram. Based on the co-expression analyses, we identified the lncRNA-related mRNAs and performed the biological function analysis. Between HCC and para-carcinoma tissues, 220 differentially expressed lncRNAs were filtered. Among these lncRNAs, 19 lncRNAs were identified as prognostic factors and were used to build a prognostic signature of overall survival (OS). Furthermore, a nomogram with high performance for predicting the OS of HCC patients (C-index: 0.779) by combining the 19-lncRNA signature (P
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