• Xiang-Bo Wan, Yan Zhao, Xin-Juan Fan, Hong-Min Cai, Yan Zhang, Ming-Yuan Chen, Jie Xu, Xiang-Yuan Wu, Hong-Bo Li, Yi-Xin Zeng, Ming-Huang Hong, and Quentin Liu.
• Department of Medical Oncology, the Third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, People's Republic of China.
• Plos One. 2012 Jan 1; 7 (3): e31989.

BackgroundAccurate prognostication of locally advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) will benefit patients for tailored therapy. Here, we addressed this issue by developing a mathematical algorithm based on support vector machine (SVM) through integrating the expression levels of multi-biomarkers.Methodology/Principal FindingsNinety-seven locally advanced NPC patients in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), consisting of 48 cases serving as training set and 49 cases as testing set of SVM models, with 5-year follow-up were studied. We designed SVM models by selecting the variables from 38 tissue molecular biomarkers, which represent 6 tumorigenesis signaling pathways, and 3 EBV-related serological biomarkers. We designed 3 SVM models to refine prognosis of NPC with 5-year follow-up. The SVM1 displayed highly predictive sensitivity (sensitivity, specificity were 88.0% and 81.9%, respectively) by integrating the expression of 7 molecular biomarkers. The SVM2 model showed highly predictive specificity (sensitivity, specificity were 84.0% and 94.5%, respectively) by grouping the expression level of 12 molecular biomarkers and 3 EBV-related serological biomarkers. The SVM3 model, constructed by combination SVM1 with SVM2, displayed a high predictive capacity (sensitivity, specificity were 88.0% and 90.3%, respectively). We found that 3 SVM models had strong power in classification of prognosis. Moreover, Cox multivariate regression analysis confirmed these 3 SVM models were all the significant independent prognostic model for overall survival in testing set and overall patients.Conclusions/SignificanceOur SVM prognostic models designed in the RCT displayed strong power in refining patient prognosis for locally advanced NPC, potentially directing future target therapy against the related signaling pathways.

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