Identification of a Metabolism-Related Risk Signature to Predict the Outcome and Immune Infiltration of Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Author(s):  
Yu Liu ◽  
Liyu Wang ◽  
Hengchang Liu ◽  
He Tian ◽  
Tao Fan ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Metabolic reprogramming is associated with tumor heterogeneity and progression. Understanding the characteristics of metabolic reprogramming in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) might help us to uncover new biomarkers for patient outcomes and targets for therapies.Methods: In this study, metabolism-related genes were screened from mRNA microarray data (GSE53624, GSE53622). Consensus clustering analysis was used to divide tumors into subgroups. Survival analysis and univariate Cox analysis were performed to select prognostic genes. A metabolism-related gene signature was established with multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression (PHR) analysis in the training group (GSE53624). Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) and CIBERSORT were used to analyze functional enrichment and immune cell infiltration.The gene signature and immune infiltration were verified in two public databases (GSE53622, TCGA-ESCC) and in two independent cohorts, 95 and 119 ESCC patients, by immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis. Results: Based on prognosis-related metabolic gene expression, three cluster subgroups (k = 3) were identified with significantly different immune cell infiltration patterns, clinical features and overall survival (OS) times. Then, we developed a multigene (INPP5E, CD38 and POLR3G) prognostic signature that showed better predictive ability and was found to be an independent prognostic risk factor in ESCC database and two public database analyses. This result could also be verified by multicenter IHC experiment and indicated the clinical application potential. In addition, GSEA showed that several tumor-related pathways were associated with the prognostic signature. Furthermore, the immune cell infiltration of regulatory T cells (Tregs) and plasma cells displayed an obvious correlation with prognostic signature and IHC experiment in 119 cohort also support this result.Conclusions: Our study indicated that the metabolism-related prognostic gene could stratify patients into subgroups and was associated with immune infiltration, clinical features and outcomes. The three-gene prognostic signature from metabolic-related gene displays a good ability to predict OS and the infiltration of immunosuppressive Tregs and plasma cells.

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wei Guo ◽  
Fengwei Tan ◽  
Qilin Huai ◽  
Zhen Wang ◽  
Fei Shao ◽  
...  

BackgroundEsophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is one of the most common cancer types and represents a threat to global public health. N6-Methyladenosine (m6A) methylation plays a key role in the occurrence and development of many tumors, but there are still few studies investigating ESCC. This study attempts to construct a prognostic signature of ESCC based on m6A RNA methylation regulators and to explore the potential association of these regulators with the tumor immune microenvironment (TIME).MethodsThe transcriptome sequencing data and clinical information of 20 m6A RNA methylation regulators in 453 patients with ESCC (The Cancer Genome Atlas [TCGA] cohort, n = 95; Gene Expression Omnibus [GEO] cohort, n = 358) were obtained. The differing expression levels of m6A regulators between ESCC and normal tissue were evaluated. Based on the expression of these regulators, consensus clustering was performed to investigate different ESCC clusters. PD-L1 expression, immune score, immune cell infiltration and potential mechanisms among different clusters were examined. LASSO Cox regression analysis was utilized to obtain a prognostic signature based on m6A RNA methylation modulators. The relationship between the risk score based on the prognostic signature and the TIME of ESCC patients was studied in detail.ResultsSix m6A regulators (METTL3, WTAP, IGF2BP3, YTHDF1, HNRNPA2B1 and HNRNPC) were observed to be significantly highly expressed in ESCC tissues. Two molecular subtypes (clusters 1/2) were determined by consensus clustering of 20 m6A modulators. The expression level of PD-L1 in ESCC tissues increased significantly and was significantly negatively correlated with the expression levels of YTHDF2, METL14 and KIAA1429. The immune score, CD8 T cells, resting mast cells, and regulatory T cells (Tregs) in cluster 2 were significantly increased. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) shows that this cluster involves multiple hallmark pathways. We constructed a five-gene prognostic signature based on m6A RNA methylation, and the risk score based on the prognostic signature was determined to be an independent prognostic indicator of ESCC. More importantly, the prognostic value of the prognostic signature was verified using another independent cohort. m6A regulators are related to TIME, and their copy-number alterations will dynamically affect the number of tumor-infiltrating immune cells.ConclusionOur study established a strong prognostic signature based on m6A RNA methylation regulators; this signature was able to accurately predict the prognosis of ESCC patients. The m6A methylation regulator may be a key mediator of PD-L1 expression and immune cell infiltration and may strongly affect the TIME of ESCC.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bo Xiao ◽  
Liyan Liu ◽  
Aoyu Li ◽  
Cheng Xiang ◽  
Pingxiao Wang ◽  
...  

Osteosarcoma is the most common malignant bone tumor in children and adolescence. Multiple immune-related genes have been reported in different cancers. The aim is to identify an immune-related gene signature for the prospective evaluation of prognosis for osteosarcoma patients. In this study, we evaluated the infiltration of immune cells in 101 osteosarcoma patients downloaded from TARGET using the ssGSEA to the RNA-sequencing of these patients, thus, high immune cell infiltration cluster, middle immune cell infiltration cluster and low immune cell infiltration cluster were generated. On the foundation of high immune cell infiltration cluster vs. low immune cell infiltration cluster and normal vs. osteosarcoma, we found 108 common differentially expressed genes which were sequentially submitted to univariate Cox and LASSO regression analysis. Furthermore, GSEA indicated some pathways with notable enrichment in the high- and low-immune cell infiltration cluster that may be helpful in understanding the potential mechanisms. Finally, we identified seven immune-related genes as prognostic signature for osteosarcoma. Kaplan-Meier analysis, ROC curve, univariate and multivariate Cox regression further confirmed that the seven immune-related genes signature was an innovative and significant prognostic factor independent of clinical features. These results of this study offer a means to predict the prognosis and survival of osteosarcoma patients with uncovered seven-gene signature as potential biomarkers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiahang Song ◽  
Yanhu Liu ◽  
Xiang Guan ◽  
Xun Zhang ◽  
Wenda Yu ◽  
...  

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) accounts for the main esophageal cancer (ESCA) type, which is also associated with the greatest malignant grade and low survival rates worldwide. Ferroptosis is recently discovered as a kind of programmed cell death, which is indicated in various reports to be involved in the regulation of tumor biological behaviors. This work focused on the comprehensive evaluation of the association between ferroptosis-related gene (FRG) expression profiles and prognosis in ESCC patients based on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). ALOX12, ALOX12B, ANGPTL7, DRD4, MAPK9, SLC38A1, and ZNF419 were selected to develop a novel ferroptosis-related gene signature for GEO and TCGA cohorts. The prognostic risk model exactly classified patients who had diverse survival outcomes. In addition, this study identified the ferroptosis-related signature as a factor to independently predict the risk of ESCC. Thereafter, we also constructed the prognosis nomogram by incorporating clinical factors and risk score, and the calibration plots illustrated good prognostic performance. Moreover, the association of the risk score with immune checkpoints was observed. Collectively, the proposed ferroptosis-related gene signature in our study is effective and has a potential clinical application to predict the prognosis of ESCC.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zitong Feng ◽  
Jingge Qu ◽  
Xiao Liu ◽  
Jinghui Liang ◽  
Yongmeng Li ◽  
...  

Abstract Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a life-threatening thoracic tumor with a poor prognosis. Identifying the best-targeted therapy, appropriate biomarkers and individual treatment for patients with ESCC remains a significant challenge. The present study aimed to elucidate key candidate genes and immune cell infiltration characteristics in ESCC by integrated bioinformatics analysis. We downloaded nine gene expression datasets from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between ESCC tissues and normal tissues in each dataset were identified by the “limma” R package, and a total of 152 robust DEGs were identified by robust rank aggregation (RRA) algorithm. Functional enrichment analyses of the robust DEGs showed that these genes were significantly associated with extracellular matrix related process. Immune cell infiltration analysis was also conducted by CIBERSORT algorithm. We found that M0 and M1 macrophages were increased dramatically in ESCC while M2 macrophages decreased. Nine hub genes were picked out from a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network used by the CytoHubba plugin in Cytoscape. According to the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and Kaplan-Meier survival analysis, the genes PLAU, SPP1 and VCAN had high diagnostic and prognostic values for ESCC patients. Based on univariate and multivariate regression analyses, seven genes (IL18, PLAU, ANO1, SLCO1B3, CST1, NELL2 and MAGEA11) from the robust DEGs were used to construct a good prognostic model. A nomogram that incorporates seven genes signature was established to develop a quantitative method for ESCC prognosis. Our results might provide aid for exploring potential therapeutic targets and prognosis evaluation in ESCC.


Author(s):  
Nian Liu ◽  
Zijian Liu ◽  
Xinxin Liu ◽  
Xiaoru Duan ◽  
Yuqiong Huang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Melanoma is the leading cause of cancer-related death among skin tumors, with an increasing incidence worldwide. Few studies have effectively investigated the significance of an immune-related genes (IRGs) signature for melanoma prognosis. Methods: Here, we constructed an IRGs prognostic signature using bioinformatics methods and evaluated and validated its predictive capability. Then, immune cell infiltration and tumor mutation burden (TMB) landscapes associated with this signature in melanoma were analyzed comprehensively. Results: With the 10-IRG prognostic signature, melanoma patients in the low-risk group showed better survival with distinct features of high immune cell infiltration and TMB. Importantly, melanoma patients in this subgroup were significantly responsive to MAGE-A3 in the validation cohort. Conclusions: This immune-related prognostic signature is thus a reliable tool to predict melanoma prognosis; as the underlying mechanism of this signature is associated with immune infiltration and mutation burden, it might reflect the benefit of immunotherapy to patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yudong Cao ◽  
Hecheng Zhu ◽  
Jun Tan ◽  
Wen Yin ◽  
Quanwei Zhou ◽  
...  

IntroductionGlioma is the most common primary cancer of the central nervous system with dismal prognosis. Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) have been discovered to play key roles in tumorigenesis in various cancers, including glioma. Because of the relevance between immune infiltrating and clinical outcome of glioma, identifying immune-related lncRNAs is urgent for better personalized management.Materials and methodsSingle-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) was applied to estimate immune infiltration, and glioma samples were divided into high immune cell infiltration group and low immune cell infiltration group. After screening differentially expressed lncRNAs in two immune groups, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analysis was performed to construct an immune-related prognostic signature. Additionally, we explored the correlation between immune infiltration and the prognostic signature.ResultsA total of 653 samples were appropriate for further analyses, and 10 lncRNAs were identified as immune-related lncRNAs in glioma. After univariate Cox regression and LASSO Cox regression analysis, six lncRNAs were identified to construct a prognostic signature for glioma, which could be taken as independent prognostic factors in both univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses. Moreover, risk score was significantly correlated with all the 29 immune-related checkpoint expression (p < 0.05) in ssGSEA except neutrophils (p = 0.43).ConclusionThe study constructed an immune-related prognostic signature for glioma, which contributed to improve clinical outcome prediction and guide immunotherapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hualin Chen ◽  
Yang Pan ◽  
Xiaoxiang Jin ◽  
Gang Chen

AbstractTo explore novel therapeutic targets, develop a gene signature and construct a prognostic nomogram of bladder cancer (BCa). Transcriptome data and clinical traits of BCa were downloaded from UCSC Xena database and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. We then used the method of Single sample Gene Set Enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) to calculate the infiltration abundances of 24 immune cells in eligible BCa samples. By weighted correlation network analysis (WGCNA), we identified turquoise module with strong and significant association with the infiltration abundance of immune cells which were associated with overall survival of BCa patients. Subsequently, we developed an immune cell infiltration-related gene signature based on the module genes (MGs) and immune-related genes (IRGs) from the Immunology Database and Analysis Portal (ImmPort). Then, we tested the prognostic power and performance of the signature in both discovery and external validation datasets. A nomogram integrated with signature and clinical features were ultimately constructed and tested. Five prognostic immune cell infiltration-related module genes (PIRMGs), namely FPR1, CIITA, KLRC1, TNFRSF6B, and WFIKKN1, were identified and used for gene signature development. And the signature showed independent and stable prognosis predictive power. Ultimately, a nomogram consisting of signature, age and tumor stage was constructed, and it showed good and stable predictive ability on prognosis. Our prognostic signature and nomogram provided prognostic indicators and potential immunotherapeutic targets for BCa. Further researches are needed to verify the clinical effectiveness of this nomogram and these biomarkers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jianlei Bi ◽  
Fangfang Bi ◽  
Xue Pan ◽  
Qing Yang

Abstract Background Glycolysis affects tumor growth, invasion, chemotherapy resistance, and the tumor microenvironment. In this study, we aimed to construct a glycolysis-related prognostic model for ovarian cancer and analyze its relationship with the tumor microenvironment’s immune cell infiltration. Methods We obtained six glycolysis-related gene sets for gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). Ovarian cancer data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and two Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) datasets were divided into two groups after removing batch effects. We compared the tumor environments' immune components in high-risk and low-risk groups and analyzed the correlation between glycolysis- and immune-related genes. Then, we generated and validated a predictive model for the prognosis of ovarian cancer using the glycolysis-related genes. Results Overall, 27/329 glycolytic genes were associated with survival in ovarian cancer, 8 of which showed predictive value. The tumor cell components in the tumor microenvironment did not differ between the high-risk and low-risk groups; however, the immune score differed significantly between groups. In total, 13/24 immune cell types differed between groups, including 10 T cell types and three other immune cell types. Eight glycolysis-related prognostic genes were related to the expression of multiple immune-related genes at varying degrees, suggesting a relationship between glycolysis and immune response. Conclusions We identified eight glycolysis-related prognostic genes that effectively predicted survival in ovarian cancer. To a certain extent, the newly identified gene signature was related to the tumor microenvironment, especially immune cell infiltration and immune-related gene expression. These findings provide potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets for ovarian cancer.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document