Across TCGA pan-cancer cohorts, RNA activity of the "Circadian sleep/wake cycle, sleep" pathway is associated with patient survival in 24 of 34 cancer lineages. Pathway activity is summarized from the expression of its 16 member genes.
The strongest signal is observed in uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma (UCEC), where higher "Circadian sleep/wake cycle, sleep" 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 CESC and KIRC, show the opposite pattern, with higher activity associated with better survival.
UCEC, LUSC, and CESC 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.