Genome-Wide Analysis of Alternative Splicing Identifies a Prognostic Signature in ER-Positive Breast Cancer.

BACKGROUND/

OBJECTIVES

Alternative splicing (AS) contributes substantially to transcriptomic diversity and has emerged as an important regulator of cancer progression. However, the genome-wide characterization of AS events specific to estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer remains limited. This study aims to comprehensively profile AS in ER-positive breast cancer and identify a prognostic AS signature associated with patient outcome.

METHODS

Clinical and splicing data (Percent Spliced In values) were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) for 737 ER-positive samples. Prognostic AS events were identified using Cox regression analysis. The Least Absolute Shrinkage Selection Operator (LASSO) model was used to construct an AS-based prognostic signature, and a standardized risk score was calculated for each sample. The signature was then evaluated by Kaplan-Meier (KM) analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves, in addition to other methods to validate model performance. Furthermore, transcript-level annotation and RNA expression correlation were performed to evaluate biological relevance.

RESULTS

Profiling identified 6276 AS events across 4457 genes, with exon skipping (ES) representing the most prevalent class (34.4%). Model analysis established a novel five-event AS prognostic signature (comprising DNAJC14, BAZ2B, PCDHAC1, PCDHA7, and DAPL1). The signature significantly stratified patients into high-risk and low-risk groups for both disease-free survival (DFS; p < 0.001) and overall survival (OS; p < 0.001). HER2-specific analysis demonstrated more consistent performance in HER2-negative patients for both DFS (p < 0.001) and OS (p = 0.018). The model achieved area under the curve (AUC) of 0.804 for 60-month follow-up supporting long-term prognostic performance. Additionally, the signature demonstrated stable and reliable discrimination with a concordance index (C-index) of approximately 0.73 across multiple validation methods.

CONCLUSIONS

The study identified AS signature with promising prognostic value in ER-positive breast cancer. This highlights the potential of splicing-based models to refine risk stratification beyond conventional gene expression analysis.