m6A RNA Methylation Regulators Elicit Malignant Progression and Predict Clinical Outcome in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide, and N6-methyladenosine (m⁶A) is a predominant internal modification of RNA in various cancers. We obtained the expression profiles of m⁶A-related genes for HCC patients from the International Cancer Genome Consortium and The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets. Most of the m⁶A RNA methylation regulators were confirmed to be differentially expressed among groups stratified by clinical characteristics and tissues. The clinical factors (including stage, grade, and gender) were correlated with the two subgroups (cluster 1/2). We identified an m⁶A RNA methylation regulator-based signature (including METTL3, YTHDC2, and YTHDF2) that could effectively stratify a high-risk subset of these patients by univariate and LASSO Cox regression, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis indicated that the signature had a powerful predictive ability. Immune cell analysis revealed that the genes in the signature were correlated with B cell, CD4 T cell, CD8 T cell, dendritic cell, macrophage, and neutrophil. Functional enrichment analysis suggested that these three genes may be involved in genetic and epigenetic events with known links to HCC. Moreover, the nomogram was established based on the signature integrated with clinicopathological features. The calibration curve and the area under ROC also demonstrated the good performance of the nomogram in predicting 3- and 5-year OS in the ICGC and TCGA cohorts. In summary, we demonstrated the vital role of m⁶A RNA methylation regulators in the initial presentation and progression of HCC and constructed a nomogram which would predict the clinical outcome and provide a basis for individualized therapy.