The effect Of vascular related CeRNA genes and corresponding imaging biomarkers on survival in lower grade glioma.

Background & Aims: To investigate the differential expression of vascular related ceRNA regulatory genes in LGG with different mutations of IDH1 and MGMT, and to verify imaging gene markers that can be closely associated with vascular related ceRNA regulatory genes.

Method: Five hundred fifteen patients with LGG were collected from TCGA database. CeRNA network analysis, GO analysis and Cox risk regression were used to find vascular ceRNA regulatory genes and their genetic markers related to survival. The preoperative MRI image data and postoperative tumor tissues of 14 patients with WHO grade III glioma were collected for full transcriptome analysis. The correlation between image characteristics of LGG and survival related vascular ceRNA regulatory genes was compared using nonparametric U test and Pearson correlation coefficient analysis.

Results: Vascular related genes ranked first in the functional enrichment analysis of differentially expressed genes in LGG. EPHA2, ETS1, YAP1 and MEIS1 could significantly affect the survival of patients in each group of LGG. The volume of enhanced region was negatively correlated with IDH1 (r = -0.622, P = 0.009) mutation and TMEM100 (r = -0.535, P = 0.024), and positively correlated with MEIS1 (r = 0.551, P = 0.021), rCBFmax value was negatively correlated with TMEM100 (r = -0.492, P = 0.037).

Conclusions: Under different IDH1 mutations, lncRNA-dominated vascular-related ceRNA regulatory genes were the first differentially expressed subset of each group, and could be used as an effective risk factor affecting the survival of LGG. The image characteristics of LGG was an ideal image gene marker. It was a reliable imaging biological marker which can truly reflect the pathophysiological characteristics of glioma.