Objective Here we performed the Bioinformatics analysis on the data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), in order to find the correlation between the expression of ATP Binding Cassette (ABC) Transporters’ genes and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) prognosis;
Methods Transcriptome profiles and clinical data of HCC were obtained from TCGA database. Package edgeR was used to analyze differential gene expression. Patients were divided into low-ABC expression and high-ABC expression groups based on the median expression level of ABC genes in cancer. The overall survival and short-term survival (n= 341) of the two groups was analyzed using the log-rank test and Wilcoxon test;
Results We found that ABC gene expression was correlated with the expression of PIK3C2B (p<0.001, ABCC1: r=0.27; ABCC10: r=0.57; ABCC4: r=0.20; ABCC5: r=0.28; ABCB9: r=0.17; ABCD1: r=0.21). All patients with low-ABC expression showed significantly increased overall survival. Significantly decreased overall survival (Log-rank test: p<0.05, Wilcoxon test: p<0.05) was found in patients with high expression of ABCC1 (HR=1.58), ABCD1 (HR=1.45), ABCC4 (HR=1.56), and ABCC5 (HR=1.64), while decreased short-term survival (Log-rank test: p>0.05, Wilcoxon test: p<0.05) was correlated with the increased expression of ABCC10 (HR=1.29), PIK3C2B (HR=1.29) and ABCB9 (HR=1.23);
Conclusions Our findings indicate that the specific ABC gene expression correlates with the prognosis of HCC. Therefore, ABC expression profile could be a potential indicator for HCC patients.