A refined liver cancer staging system and effective prognostic prediction can help clinicians make optimized treatment decisions, which is essential in our fight against cancer and for improving the unsatisfying survival rate of liver cancer globally. The prognosis of liver cancer is not only related to tumor status, it is also affected by the patients' liver functions and the chosen treatment. Currently, several staging systems are being tested. Herein, we analyzed RNA-seq data from the TCGA database and identified a newly annotated lncRNA, ACVR2B-AS1, whose expression is upregulated in liver cancer. Higher ACVR2B-AS1 expression is an independent adverse prognostic factor for overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS) in liver cancer patients. Our work suggests that the lncRNA ACVR2B-AS1 could be a candidate biomarker for liver cancer prognosis. Furthermore, ACVR2B-AS1 might serve as a potential therapeutic target, which is a possibility that is worthy of further study.
Copyright © 2019 Yuanyuan Nie et al.