A glycolysis-related gene expression signature in predicting recurrence of breast cancer

Background: Metabolic change is the hallmark of cancer. Even in the presence of oxygen, cancer cells reprogram their glucose metabolism to enhance glycolysis and reduce oxidative phosphorylation. In the present study, we aimed to develop a glycolysis-related gene signature to predict the prognosis of breast cancer patients.Methods Gene expression profiles and clinical data of breast cancer patients were obtained from the GEO database. Univariate, Lasso-penalized, and multivariate Cox analysis were performed to construct the glycolysis-related gene signature.Results A four-gene based signature (ALDH2, PRKACB, STMN1 and ZNF292) was developed to separate patients into high-risk and low-risk groups. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that patients in low-risk group had significantly better prognosis than those in the high-risk group. Time-dependent ROC analysis demonstrated that the glycolysis-related gene signature had excellent prognostic accuracy. We further confirmed the expression of the four prognostic genes in breast cancer and paracancerous tissues samples using qRT-PCR analysis. Expression level of PRKACB was higher in paracancerous tissues, while STMN1 and ZNF292 were overexpressed in tumor samples. No difference was found in ALDH2 expression. The same results were observed in the IHC data from the human protein atlas. Global proteome data of 105 TCGA breast cancer samples obtained from the Clinical Proteomic Tumor Analysis Consortium were used to evaluate the prognostic value of their protein levels. Consistently, high expression of PRKACB protein level was associated with better prognosis, while high ZNF292 and STMN1 protein expression levels indicated poor prognosis.Conclusions The glycolysis-related gene signature might provide an effective prognostic predictor and a new view for individual treatment of breast cancer patients.