Summary: | Background: Kidney carcinoma is a major cause of carcinoma-related
death, with the prognosis for advanced or metastatic renal cell carcinoma still
very poor. The aim of this study was to investigate feasible prognostic
biomarkers that can be used to construct a prognostic index model for clear cell
renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) patients. Methods: The mRNA expression profiles of ccRCC samples were downloaded
from the The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset and the correlation of
AIF1L with malignancy, tumor stage and prognosis were evaluated.
Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between AIF1L-low and
AIF1L-high expression groups were selected. Those with prognostic value
as determined by univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were then
used to construct a prognostic index model capable of predicting the outcome of
ccRCC patients. Results: The expression level of AIF1L was lower in ccRCC
samples than in normal kidney samples. AIF1L expression showed an
inverse correlation with tumor stage and a positive association with better
prognosis. ccRCC samples were divided into high- and low-expression groups
according to the median value of AIF1L expression. In the
AIF1L-high expression group, 165 up-regulated DEGs and 601
down-regulated DEGs were identified. Three genes (AIF1L,
SERPINC1 and CES1) were selected following univariate and
multivariate Cox regression analysis. The hazard ratio (HR) and 95% confidence
intervals (CI) for these genes were: AIF1L (HR = 0.83, 95% CI:
0.76–0.91), SERPINC1 (HR = 1.33, 95% CI: 1.12–1.58), and
CES1 (HR = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.78–0.97). A prognostic index model based on
the expression level of the three genes showed good performance in predicting
ccRCC patient outcome, with an area under the ROC curve (AUC) of 0.671. Conclusion: This research provides a better understanding of the
correlation between AIF1L expression and ccRCC. We propose a novel
prognostic index model comprising AIF1L, SERPINC1 and
CES1 expression that may assist physicians in determining the prognosis
of ccRCC patients.
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