Identification of 5-methylcytosine-related signature for predicting prognosis in ovarian cancer

Lei Wang,Song Gao

doi:10.1186/s40659-021-00340-8

Abstract

BackgroundOvarian cancer is one of the most common malignancies often resulting in a poor prognosis. 5-methylcytosine (m5C) is a common epigenetic modification with roles in eukaryotes. However, the expression and function of m5C regulatory factors in ovarian cancer remained unclear.ResultsTwo molecular subtypes with different prognostic and clinicopathological features were identified based on m5C regulatory factors. Meanwhile, functional annotation showed that in the two subtypes, 452 differentially expressed genes were significantly related to the malignant progression of ovarian cancer. Subsequently, four m5C genes were screened to construct a risk marker predictive of overall survival and indicative of clinicopathological features of ovarian cancer, also the robustness of the risk marker was verified in external dataset and internal validation set. multifactorial cox regression analysis and nomogram demonstrated that risk score was an independent prognostic factor for ovarian cancer prognosis.ConclusionIn conclusion, our results revealed that m5C-related genes play a critical role in tumor progression in ovarian cancer. Further detection of m5C methylation could provide a novel targeted therapy for treating ovarian cancer.

Highlights

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common malignancies often resulting in a poor prognosis. 5-methylcytosine (m5C) is a common epigenetic modification with roles in eukaryotes
The survival of patients in the C1 subtype was obviously shorter than those in the C2 subtypes. These results indicated that consensus clustering of m5C regulatory factors could identify ovarian cancer subtypes with different prognosis
The interrelation of m5C‐associated molecular subtypes and clinicopathological characteristics of patients with ovarian cancer We compared the distribution of different clinical features in the two molecular subtypes, and determined whether the clinical features were different in different subtypes

Summary

Introduction

Ovarian cancer is one of the most common malignancies often resulting in a poor prognosis. 5-methylcytosine (m5C) is a common epigenetic modification with roles in eukaryotes. Ovarian cancer is one of the most common malignancies often resulting in a poor prognosis. 5-methylcytosine (m5C) is a common epigenetic modification with roles in eukaryotes. Due to a lack of effective screening strategies, ovarian cancer shows a late onset of clinical symptoms and is prone to widespread pelvic and abdominal implantation and dissemination, approximately 60% of Epigenetic modifications, which mainly include DNA methylation and histone modifications, are chemical alterations in nucleic acids that do not change DNA sequence but play a key role in genetics, growth, longevity, aging and diseases [9, 10]. Knowledge of RNA modifications has been greatly expanded from fine-tuned chemical structural features of non-protein-coding RNAs to dynamically regulated, reversible, post-transcriptional regulators that are widely present in a variety of cellular processes [12]. New evidence gradually revealed the role in m5C in post-transcriptional regulation

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Conclusion