Investigation and verification of the clinical significance and perspective of natural killer group 2 member D ligands in colon adenocarcinoma

This study investigated and verified the diagnostic and prognostic values of natural killer group 2 member D ligand (NKG2DL) genes in colon adenocarcinoma (COAD). We downloaded s expression data and corresponding clinical parameters from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and used bioinformatics techniques to investigate the values of s in COAD. Then, we used the GSE40967 cohort to verify the prognostic value of s. Finally, we verified the ULBP2 expression level in tissues, and also investigated the diagnostic and prognostic values of ULBP2 in COAD. The diagnostic receiver operating characteristic curves showed that , , and had high diagnostic values in COAD [Area Under Curve (AUC) > 0.9]. In TCGA cohort, the univariate and multivariate survival analyses suggested that was correlated with the prognosis of COAD recurrence-free survival (RFS) and overall survival (OS). In GSE40967 cohort, was associated with CC RFS and OS. Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction and immunohistochemistry results showed that ULBP2 was highly expressed in COAD tumor tissues ( < 0.05) and both had diagnostic values (AUC > 0.7). Validated survival analysis showed that the high expression of ULBP2 had a worse prognosis in COAD OS and RFS. Thus, might be an independent diagnostic and prognostic biomarker of COAD.