Multicellular organismal response to stress

Across TCGA pan-cancer cohorts, RNA activity of the Multicellular organismal response to stress pathway is associated with patient survival in 19 of 34 cancer lineages. Pathway activity is summarized from the expression of its 92 member genes.

The strongest signal is observed in adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC), where higher Multicellular organismal response to stress pathway activity is associated with poorer disease-free survival. In most high-consensus cancer types, elevated pathway activity shows an unfavorable survival association, although some cancer types, such as HNSC and COAD, show the opposite pattern, with higher activity associated with better survival.

ACC, SCLC, and HNSC are the cancer lineages in which this pathway most reproducibly stratifies patient survival.

Pathway-activity survival associations by lineage

Ranked by sampling consensus. AUC1 and AUC2 represent the survival AUCs for the high- and low-pathway-activity groups, respectively. The group with the lower AUC is interpreted as having poorer survival. The reported p-values are derived from the log-rank test.

Lineage	Measure	Split	Stage	AUC1 high	AUC2 low	p	Sampling consensus
ACC	DFS	Median	All	0.396	0.722	<.001	106	view →
SCLC	DFS	Median	All	0.455	0.782	<.001	96	view →
HNSC	DFS	Median	III,IV	0.640	0.506	.002	40	view →
COAD	OS	Tertile	IV	0.854	0.303	.017	26	view →
ESCA	OS	Quartile	All	0.112	1.000	.008	22	view →
THYM	DFS	Median	II,III,IV	0.968	0.769	.004	18	view →
SKCM	OS	Median	All	0.403	0.300	.009	18	view →
THCA	DFS	Quartile	All	0.883	0.962	.007	17	view →
BRCA	DFS	Quartile	II,III,IV	0.971	0.919	.016	13	view →
KIRC	OS	Median	All	0.566	0.672	.010	10	view →
CESC	OS	Median	All	0.827	0.902	.017	8	view →
UCS	OS	Median	II,III,IV	0.375	0.682	.013	6	view →

Pink = unfavorable, green = favorable. Showing the 12 strongest of 19 lineages.

GO:0033555–ACC (DFS)

Open the ACC breakdown →