Expression signature of six-snoRNA serves as novel non-invasive biomarker for diagnosis and prognosis prediction of renal clear cell carcinoma

Increasing evidence has verified that small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs) play significant roles in tumorigenesis and exhibit prognostic value in clinical practice. In the study, we analysed the expression profile and clinical relevance of snoRNAs from TCGA database including 530 ccRCC (clear cell renal cell carcinoma) and 72 control cases. By using univariate and multivariate Cox analysis, we established a six-snoRNA signature and divided patients into high-risk or low-risk groups. We found patients in high-risk group had significantly shorter overall survival and recurrence-free survival than those in low-risk group in test series, validation series and entire series by Kaplan-Meier analysis. We also confirmed this signature had a great accuracy and specificity in 64 clinical tissue cases and 50 serum samples. Then, depending on receiver operating characteristic curve analysis we found the six-snoRNA signature was an superior indicator better than conventional clinical factors (AUC = 0.732). Furthermore, combining the signature with TNM stage or Fuhrman grade were the optimal indicators (AUC = 0.792; AUC = 0.800) and processed the clinical applied value for ccRCC. Finally, we found the SNORA70B and its hose gene USP34 might directly regulate Wnt signalling pathway to promote tumorigenesis in ccRCC. In general, our study established a six-snoRNA signature as an independent and superior diagnosis and prognosis indicator for ccRCC.