INHBA is a prognostic predictor for patients with colon adenocarcinoma.

Background: Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is one of the most lethal cancers. It is particularly important to accurately predict prognosis and to provide individualized treatment. Several lines of evidence suggest that genetic factors and clinicopathological characteristics are related to cancer onset and progression. The aim of this study was to identify potential prognostic genes and to develop a nomogram to predict survival and recurrence of COAD.

Methods: To identify potential prognostic genes in COAD, microarray datasets were downloaded from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were obtained from GEO2R. Venn diagram was drawn to select those genes that were overexpressed in all datasets, and survival analyses were performed to determine the prognostic values of the selected genes. New nomograms were developed based on the genes that were significantly associated with prognosis. Clinicopathological data were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). Finally, the new nomograms were compared head-to-head comparison with the TNM nomogram.

Results: From GSE21510, GSE110223, GSE113513 and GSE110224, a total of 834, 218, 236 and 613 overexpressed DEGs were screened out, respectively. The Venn diagram revealed that 12 genes appeared in all four profiles. After survival analyses, only INHBA expression was associated with both overall survival (OS) and disease-free survival (DFS). Multivariate analyses revealed that age, pathological N and pathological M were significant independent risk factors for OS. Age, pathological N, pathological M and INHBA were significant independent risk factors for DFS. Two prediction models predicted the probability of 3-year survival and 5-year survival for OS and DFS, respectively. The concordance indexes were 0.785 for 3-year overall survival, 0.759 for 5-year overall survival, 0.789 for 3-year disease-free survival and 0.757 for 5-year disease-free survival. The head-to-head comparison according to time-dependent ROC curves indicated that the new models had higher predictive accuracy. Decision curve analyses (DCA) indicated that the clinical value of the new models were higher than TNM models for predicting disease-free survival.

Conclusion: The combination of INHBA expression with a clinical nomogram improves prognostic power in colon adenocarcinoma, especially for predicting recurrence.