Identify potential clinical significance of long noncoding RNA forkhead box P4 antisense RNA 1 in patients with early stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Previous studies have shown that forkhead box P4 antisense RNA 1 (FOXP4-AS1) is dysregulated in tumor tissues and can serve as a prognostic indicator for multiple cancers. However, the clinical significance of FOXP4-AS1 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains unclear. The goal of this study is to recognize the possible clinical significance of long noncoding RNA FOXP4-AS1 in patients with early stage PDAC. A total of 112 patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) PDAC cohort, receiving RNA sequencing, were involved in the study. Survival analysis, functional mechanism, and potential small molecule drugs of target therapy of FOXP4-AS1 were performed in this study. Survival analysis in TCGA PDAC cohort suggested that patients with high FOXP4-AS1 expression had significantly augmented possibility of death than in PDAC patients with lower FOXP4-AS1 expression (adjusted P = .008; adjusted HR = 2.143, 95% CI = 1.221-3.760). In this study, a genome-wide RNA sequencing dataset was used to identify 927 genes co-expressing with FOXP4-AS1 in PDAC tumor tissues. A total of 676 differentially expressed genes were identified between different FOXP4-AS1 expression groups. Functional enrichment analysis of these genes and gene set enrichment analysis for PDAC genome-wide RNA sequencing dataset was done. We have found that FOXP4-AS1 may function in PDAC by participating in biological processes and pathways including oxidative phosphorylation, tricarboxylic acid cycle, classical tumor-related pathways such as NF-kappaB as well as Janus kinase/signal transducers in addition to activators of transcription, cell proliferation, and adhesion. In addition, we also screened two potential targeted therapeutic small molecule drugs (dimenhydrinate and metanephrine) for FOXP4-AS1 in PDAC. In conclusion, our present study demonstrated that higher expression of FOXP4-AS1 in PDAC tumor tissues were related with an inferior medical outcome. Through multiple genome-wide approaches, we identified the potential molecular mechanisms of FOXP4-AS1 in PDAC and two targeted therapeutic drugs for it.

Keywords: FOXP4-AS1; The Cancer Genome Atlas; bioinformatics; clinical significance; pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.