A Risk Signature Consisting of Eight m6A Methylation Regulators Predicts the Prognosis of Glioma

Glioma progression seriously correlates to the epigenetic context. This study aims to identify glioma subtypes by clustering analysis of patients using the multi-omics data of N6-methyladenosine (m(6)A) methylation regulators and to construct a risk signature for investigating the role of m(6)A methylation regulators in the prognosis of glioma. Multi-omics data of glioma and normal control tissues were obtained through The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. The clustering analysis of multi-omics data of patients was conducted using the R package iClusterPlus software. The risk model was constructed by univariate and multivariate Cox analysis, and the glioma expression data and related clinical data were obtained by Chinese Glioma Genome Atlas (CGGA) datasets to verify the risk model. By analyzing the glioma data in TCGA, we found that the risk signature could be constructed according to the eight genes with m(6)A methylation modification function, including ALKBH5, HNRNPA2B1, IGF2BP2, IGF2BP3, RBM15, WTAP, YTHDF1, and YTHDF2. Meanwhile, we found that IGF2BP2 and IGF2BP3 were highly expressed in glioma subtypes with high-risk scores and closely related to the prognosis of glioma patients. m(6)A methylation regulators, especially IGF2BP2 and IGF2BP3, play important roles in the malignant progression of glioma. The risk signature constructed by eight m(6)A methylation regulators can predict the prognosis of glioma. IGF2BP2 and IGF2BP3 may be the key regulatory factors of m(6)A methylation regulators involved in the occurrence and development of glioma, and can serve as molecular markers for the prognosis of glioma.