Comprehensive investigation of the prognostic values and molecular mechanisms of syntaxin binding protein 5 antisense RNA 1 in patients with colon adenocarcinoma based on RNA sequencing dataset.

The main purpose of this study is to perform a comprehensive investigation of the prognostic value and molecular mechanism of syntaxin binding protein 5 antisense RNA 1 (STXBP5-AS1) through the whole genome RNA sequencing data of the The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) cohort. There were 438 COAD patients were fit into current study for survival analysis. Gene expression profiling interactive analysis 2.0, Database for Annotation, Visualization and Integrated Discovery v6.8, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and connectivity map (CMap) are used to investigate the molecular mechanisms and targeted drugs of STXBP5-AS1 in COAD. By comparing the expression level of tumor and non-tumor tissues, we found that STXBP5-AS1 was notablely down-regulated in COAD tumor tissues. Survival analysis suggested that low STXBP5-AS1 expression was significantly related to poor overall survival (OS) of COAD (log-rank P=0.035, adjusted P=0.005, HR=0.545, 95%CI=0.356-0.836). The enrichment analysis of STXBP5-AS1 co-expressed genes, GSEA and differentially expressed genes suggests that STXBP5-AS1 may play a part in COAD by regulating the following biological processes or pathways: cell junction, DNA replication, apoptosis, cell cycle, metastasis, tumor protein 53, Wnt, mTORC1, MCM, notch receptor 4, transforming growth factor beta receptor, and cGMP-PKG signaling pathway. CMap analysis was screened out four small molecule drugs (anisomycin, cephaeline, NU-1025 and quipazine) that may be used as STXBP5-AS1 targeted therapy drugs in COAD. The co-expression analysis of STXBP5-AS1 and immune cell gene signature indicated that STXBP5-AS1 was significantly related to immune cell gene set in normal intestinal tissues, but not in COAD tumor tissues. Our results revealed that STXBP5-AS1 is notablely down-regulated in COAD tumor tissues, and may act as a novel prognostic biomarker for COAD.