Elevated Ras related GTP binding B (RRAGB) expression predicts poor overall survival and constructs a prognostic nomogram for colon adenocarcinoma

ABSTRACT

Currently, no articles have explored the roles of RRAGB gene in the occurrence and development of cancer. By means of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data mining, we found that this gene might be a novel prognostic predictor for colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). Hence, this article was carried out to explore its roles in COAD and associations with immunity. RRAGB single-gene expression matrix and corresponding clinical information were extracted from TCGA database. Univariate/multivariate cox regression analyses and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) were utilized to identify independent prognostic factors and RRAGB related pathways, respectively. Relationships between RRAGB and immunity were also analyzed. Boxplot and K-M survival analysis indicated that RRAGB was not only differently expressed in COAD (P < 0.05), but also significantly associated with overall survival (OS; P < 0.05). Univariate and multivariate Cox hazard regression analyses indicated that RRAGB could serve as an independent prognostic factor for COAD (both P < 0.05). GSEA identified five signaling pathways significantly enriched in the high-RRAGB expression phenotype. Moreover, a RRAGB-based nomogram was successfully constructed and displayed a satisfactory performance. In addition, RRAGB expression was found to be significantly associated with microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor mutational burden (TMB) and immunity. Our results revealed that RRAGB could be a prognostic biomarker for COAD in terms of OS and markedly related to MSI, TMB, and immunity. We also constructed an RRAGB-based nomogram with a satisfactory performance. Further researches should be carried out to validate our findings.

GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT

KEYWORDS:

• Colon adenocarcinoma
• RRAGB
• nomogram
• survival
• TCGA

Highlights

• It was the first time for us to comprehensively explore the expression of RRAGB and its impact on COAD.

• RRAGB could serve as an independent prognostic factor for predicting the prognosis of COAD patients.

• RRAGB was significantly associated with MSI, TMB, immunity.

• GSEA identified five RRAGB‑related signaling pathways.

• RRAGB-based nomogram was also constructed to guide the prognosis of COAD patients.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the researchers and study participants for their contributions.

Availability of data and material

All data and clinical information could be obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database (https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Author’s contribution

SR.Z: Protocol/project development; Y.Y, WJ.W: Data collection or management; J.Z, JY.S: Data analysis and manuscript revision; JJ.X, QQ.L: Manuscript writing/editing. All authors have read and approved the final manuscript.