Basic Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2018. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. Aug 14, 2018; 24(30): 3426-3439
Published online Aug 14, 2018. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v24.i30.3426
Identification of a five-long non-coding RNA signature to improve the prognosis prediction for patients with hepatocellular carcinoma
Qiu-Jie Zhao, Jiao Zhang, Lin Xu, Fang-Feng Liu
Qiu-Jie Zhao, Jiao Zhang, Lin Xu, Department of Gastroenterology, Shandong Provincial Hospital affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan 250021, Shandong Province, China
Fang-Feng Liu, Department of Hepatobiliary Surgery, Shandong Provincial Hospital affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan 250021, Shandong Province, China
Author contributions: Zhao QJ conceived the study, drafted and revised the manuscript; Zhang J and Xu L helped with the statistical analysis; Liu FF helped participated in data mining; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China, No. 81702816 (to Zhao QJ); and Shandong Provincial Natural Science Foundation, No. ZR2017PH030 (to Zhao QJ).
Institutional review board statement: This studied mined the TCGA database and doesn’t involve any experiments with animals or human beings. Because the TCGA data are a community resource project, additional ethical approval was not acquired.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest related to this study.
Data sharing statement: The datasets supporting the conclusions of this article are included within the article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Qiu-Jie Zhao, PhD, Chief Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, Shandong Provincial Hospital affiliated to Shandong University, No. 324, Jingwuwei 7th Road, Jinan 250021, Shandong Province, China. zhaoqiujiesdu@126.com
Telephone: +86-531-68772952
Received: March 27, 2018
Peer-review started: March 28, 2018
First decision: May 9, 2018
Revised: May 24, 2018
Accepted: June 22, 2018
Article in press: June 22, 2018
Published online: August 14, 2018
Core Tip

Core tip: In the present study, we developed a 5-long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) signature for predicting the prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients based on The Cancer Genome Atlas database. The signature was reproducible and robust in another independent large-scale HCC cohort, supporting its utility and effectiveness. In addition, the prognostic value of the 5-lncRNA signature was independent of clinicopathological variables. When compared with two previously identified signatures for HCC survival prediction, this 5-lncRNA signature showed superior prognostic power. Our study indicates that the 5-lncRNA signature could improve survival prediction and could be used as a prognostic biomarker for HCC patients.