The prognostic value of autophagy related genes with tumor- suppressor function in Ewing sarcoma

Abstract Background: Ewing sarcoma (ES) is the second most common primary malignant bone tumor mainly occurring in children, adolescents and young adults with high metastasis and mortality. Autophagy has been reported to be involved in the survival of ES, but the role remains unclear. Therefore, it’s necessary to investigate the prognostic value of autophagy related genes using bioinformatics methods. Results: ATG2B, ATG10 and DAPK1 were final screened genes for a prognostic model. KM and risk score plots showed patients in high score group had better prognoses both in training and validation sets. C-indexes of the model for training and validation sets were 0.68 and 0.71, respectively. Calibration analyses indicated the model had high prediction accuracy in training and validation sets. The AUC values of ROC for 1-, 3-, 5-year prediction were 0.65, 0.73 and 0.84 in training set, 0.88, 0.73 and 0.79 in validation set. Decision curve analyses showed that patients could benefit much from the model. Differential and functional analyses suggested that autophagy and apoptosis were upregulated in high risk score group. Conclusions: ATG2B, ATG10 and DAPK1 were ARGs of prognostic value in ES and may also be potential therapeutic targets worth further research.