scholarly journals Validation of an Immune-Related Gene Pair Index as a Prognostic Marker of Lung Squamous Cell Carcinoma

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zihao Wang ◽  
Xuan Xiang ◽  
Xiaoshan Wei ◽  
Linlin Ye ◽  
Yiran Niu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) is one of the subtypes of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and accounts for approximately 20 to 30% of all lung cancers. Methods: In this study, we developed an immune-related gene pair index (IRGPI) for LUSC from 8 public LUSC data sets, including The Cancer Genome Atlas LUSC cohort and Gene Expression Omnibus data sets, and explored the prognostic value of IRGPI for patients with LUSC. Results: IRGPI was constructed by 13 gene pairs consisting of 25 unique immune-related genes from the training cohort. Multivariate cox regression analysis showed that high risk based on IRGPI was an independent risk factor for poor prognosis of patients with LUSC in the training cohort (230 patients; HR= 3.40; 95%CI [2.34-4.94]; p<0.001), the testing cohort (228 patients; HR=2.11; 95%CI [1.48-3.01]; p<0.001) and the validation cohort (472 patients; HR=1.99; 95%CI [1.5-2.63]; p<0.001). The infiltrations of naïve B cells, plasma cells, CD8+ T cells, activated memory CD4+ T cells, gamma delta (γδ) T cells, M1 macrophages, and activated dendritic cells were lower in the high-risk group, as compared with the low-risk group in the TCGA cohort. The infiltrations of neutrophils, activated mast cells, and monocytes were higher in the high-risk group. Conclusions: IRGPI is a significant prognostic biomarker for predicting overall survival in LUSC patients. Combining clinical features with IRGPI will improve prognostic accuracy.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zihao Wang ◽  
Xuan Xiang ◽  
Xiaoshan Wei ◽  
Linlin Ye ◽  
Yiran Niu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background. Lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) is one of the subtypes of non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and accounts for approximately 20 to 30% of all lung cancers.Methods. In this study, we developed an immune-related gene pair index (IRGPI) for early-stage LUSC from 3 public LUSC data sets, including The Cancer Genome Atlas LUSC cohort and Gene Expression Omnibus data sets, and explored whether IRGPI could act as a prognostic marker to identify patients with early-stage LUSC at high risk.Results. IRGPI was constructed by 68 gene pairs consisting of 123 unique immune-related genes from TCGA LUSC cohort. In the derivation cohort, the hazard of death among high-risk group was 10.51 times that of the low-risk group (HR, 10.51; 95%CI, 6.96-15.86; p<0.001). The hazard of death among the high-risk group was 2.26 times that of the low-risk group (HR, 2.26; 95%CI, 1.2-4.25; p=0.009) in the GSE37745 validation cohort and was 3.2 times that of low-risk group (HR, 3.2; 95%CI, 0.98-10.4; p=0.042) in the GSE41271 validation cohort. The infiltrations of CD8+ T cells and T follicular helper cells were lower in the high-risk group, as compared with the low-risk group in the TCGA cohort (6.94% vs 9.63%, p=0.004; 2.15% vs 3%, p=0.002, respectively). The infiltrations of neutrophils, activated mast cells and monocytes were higher in the high-risk group, as compared with the low-risk group in the TCGA cohort (1.63% vs 0.72%, p=0.001; 1.64% vs 1.02%, p=0.007; 0.57% vs 0.35%, p=0.041, respectively).Conclusions. IRGPI is a significant prognostic biomarker for predicting overall survival in early-stage LUSC patients.


2021 ◽  
Vol 39 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e15565-e15565
Author(s):  
Qiqi Zhu ◽  
Du Cai ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Min-Er Zhong ◽  
Dejun Fan ◽  
...  

e15565 Background: Few robust predictive biomarkers have been applied in clinical practice due to the heterogeneity of metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC) . Using the gene pair method, the absolute expression value of genes can be converted into the relative order of genes, which can minimize the influence of the sequencing platform difference and batch effects, and improve the robustness of the model. The main objective of this study was to establish an immune-related gene pairs signature (IRGPs) and evaluate the impact of the IRGPs in predicting the prognosis in mCRC. Methods: A total of 205 mCRC patients containing overall survival (OS) information from the training cohort ( n = 119) and validation cohort ( n = 86) were enrolled in this study. LASSO algorithm was used to select prognosis related gene pairs. Univariate and multivariate analyses were used to validate the prognostic value of the IRGPs. Gene sets enrichment analysis (GSEA) and immune infiltration analysis were used to explore the underlying biological mechanism. Results: An IRGPs signature containing 22 gene pairs was constructed, which could significantly separate patients of the training cohort ( n = 119) and validation cohort ( n = 86) into the low-risk and high-risk group with different outcomes. Multivariate analysis with clinical factors confirmed the independent prognostic value of IRGPs that higher IRGPs was associated with worse prognosis (training cohort: hazard ratio (HR) = 10.54[4.99-22.32], P < 0.001; validation cohort: HR = 3.53[1.24-10.08], P = 0.012). GSEA showed that several metastasis and immune-related pathway including angiogenesis, TGF-β-signaling, epithelial-mesenchymal transition and inflammatory response were enriched in the high-risk group. Through further analysis of the immune factors, we found that the proportions of CD4+ memory T cell, regulatory T cell, and Myeloid dendritic cell were significantly higher in the low-risk group, while the infiltrations of the Macrophage (M0) and Neutrophil were significantly higher in the high-risk group. Conclusions: The IRGPs signature could predict the prognosis of mCRC patients. Further prospective validations are needed to confirm the clinical utility of IRGPs in the treatment decision.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chuan Liu ◽  
Bo Chen ◽  
Zhangheng Huang ◽  
Chuan Hu ◽  
Liqing Jiang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: As a new method for predicting tumor prognosis, the predictive effect of immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) has been confirmed in several cancers, but there is no comprehensive analysis of the clinical significance of IRGPs in gastric cancer (GC).Methods: The clinical and gene expression profile data GC patients were obtained from the GEO database. Based on the ImmPort database, differently expressed immune-related genes (DEIRGs) events were determined by a comparison of GC samples and adjacent normal samples. Cox proportional regression was used to construct an IRGPs signature, and its availability was validated with three external validation sets. In addition, we explored the association between clinical data and immune features and established a nomogram to predict outcomes of GC patients. Result: A total of 88 DEIRGs were found in GC from the training set, which formed 3828 IRGPs. 14 overall survival (OS)-related IRGPs were used to construct the prognostic signature. As a result, the patients in the high- risk group have a poorer OS compared with the low-risk group. In addition, the fraction of CD8+ T cells, plasma cells, T cells CD4 memory activated, and macrophages M1 were higher in the high-risk group. The expression of two immune checkpoints, CD276 and VTCN1, was significantly higher in the high-risk group. Based on the independent prognostic factors, a nomogram was established and showed excellent performance.Conclusion: The 14 OS-related IRGPs signature was associated with the OS, immune cells, and immune checkpoints of GC patients, which can provide the basis of related immunotherapy.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jihang Luo ◽  
Puyu Liu ◽  
Leibo Wang ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Yuanyan Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Colon cancer is the most common type of gastrointestinal cancer and has high morbidity and mortality. Colon adenocarcinoma(COAD) is the main pathological type of colon cancer. There is a lot of evidence describing the correlation between the prognosis of COAD and the immune system. The objective of the current study was the development of a robust prognostic immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) model for estimating overall survival of COAD. Methods The gene expression profiles and clinical information of patients with colon adenocarcinoma come from TCGA and GEO databases and are divided into training and validation cohorts. Immune genes were selected which show significantly association with prognosis. Results Among 1647 immune genes, a 17 IRGPs model was built which was significantly associated with OS in the training cohort. In the training and validation data set, the IRGPs model divided patients into high-risk groups and low-risk groups, and the prognosis of the high-risk group was significantly worse( P <0.001). Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard analysis confirmed the feasibility of this model. Functional analysis confirmed that multiple tumor progression and stem cell growth-related pathways in high-risk groups were up-regulated. T cells regulatory and Macrophage M0 were significantly highly expressed in the high-risk group. Conclusion We successfully constructed an IRGPs model that can predict the prognosis of COAD, which provides new insights into the treatment strategy of COAD.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lumeng Luo ◽  
Minghe Lv ◽  
Xuan Li ◽  
Tiankui Qiao ◽  
Kuaile Zhao ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Recent advances in immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) have dramatically changed the therapeutic strategy against lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). In the era of immunotherapy, effective biomarkers to better predict outcomes and inform treatment decisions for patients diagnosed with LUSC are urgently needed. We hypothesized that immune contexture of LUSC is potentially dictated by tumor intrinsic events, such as autophagy. Thus, we attempted to construct an autophagy-related risk signature and examine its prediction value for immune phenotype in LUSC.Method: The expression profile of LUSC was obtained from the cancer genome atlas (TCGA) database and the profile of autophagy-related genes (ARGs) was extracted. The survival‑related ARGs (sARGs) was screened out through survival analyses. Random forest was performed to select the sARGs and construct a prognostic risk signature based on these sARGs. The signature was further validated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis and Cox regression. GEO dataset was used as an independent testing dataset. Patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk group based on the risk score. Then, gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was conducted between the two groups. The Single-Sample GSEA (ssGSEA) was introduced to quantify the relative infiltration of immune cells. The correlations between risk score and several main immune checkpoints were examined. And the ESTIMATE algorithm was used to calculate the estimate/immune/stromal scores of the LUSC. Results: Four ARGs (CFLAR, RGS19, PINK1 and CTSD) with the most significant prognostic values were enrolled to construct the risk signature. Patients in high-risk group had better prognosis than the low-risk group (P < 0.0001 in TCGA; P < 0.01 in GEO) and considered as an independent prognosis factor. We also found that high-risk group indicated an immune-suppression status and had higher levels of infiltrating regulatory T cells and macrophages, which are correlated with worse outcome. Besides, risk score showed a significantly positive correlation with the expression of PD-1 and CTLA4, as well as estimate score and immune score.Conclusion: This study established a novel autophagy-related four-gene prognostic risk signature, and the autophagy-related scores are associated with immune landscape of LUSC, with higher score indicating a stronger immune-suppression status.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 096368972097713
Author(s):  
Xueping Jiang ◽  
Yanping Gao ◽  
Nannan Zhang ◽  
Cheng Yuan ◽  
Yuan Luo ◽  
...  

Tumor microenvironment (TME) has critical impacts on the pathogenesis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD). However, the molecular mechanism of TME effects on the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unclear. Our study aimed to establish an immune-related gene pair (IRGP) model for prognosis prediction and internal mechanism investigation. Based on 702 TME-related differentially expressed genes (DEGs) extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) training cohort using the ESTIMATE algorithm, a 10-IRGP signature was established to predict LUAD patient prognosis. Gene Ontology and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analyses showed that DEGs were significantly associated with tumor immune response. In both TCGA training and Gene Expression Omnibus validation datasets, the risk score was an independent prognostic factor for LUAD patients using Lasso-Cox analysis, and patients in the high-risk group had poorer prognosis than those in the low-risk one. In the high-risk group, M2 macrophage and neutrophil infiltrations were higher, while the levels of T cell follicular helpers were significantly lower. The gene set enrichment analysis results showed that DNA repair signaling pathways were involved. In summary, we established an IRGP signature as a potential biomarker to predict the prognosis of LUAD patients.


Author(s):  
Xianghong Zhou ◽  
Shi Qiu ◽  
Di Jin ◽  
Kun Jin ◽  
Xiaonan Zheng ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Papillary renal carcinoma (PRCC) is one of the important subtypes of kidney cancer, with a high degree of heterogeneity. At present, there is still a lack of robust and accurate biomarkers for the diagnosis, prognosis and treatment selection of PRCC. Considering the important role of tumor immunity in PRCC, we aim to construct a signature based on immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) to estimate the prognostic of patients with PRCC.Methods: We obtained gene expression profiling and clinical information of patients with PRCC from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO), which were divided into discovery and validation cohorts, respectively. The immune-related genes in the samples were used to construct gene pairs, and the immune-related genes pairs (IRGPs) with robust impact for overall survival (OS) were screened out to construct the signature by univariate analysis, multivariate Cox analysis, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso) analysis. Then we verified the prognostic role of the signature, and assessed the relationship between this signature with tumor immune infiltration and functional pathways.Results: A total of 315 patients were included in our study, and divided to discovery (n=287) and validation (n=28) cohorts. Finally, we selected 14 IRGPs with a panel of 22 unique genes to construct the prognostic signature. According to the signature, we stratified patients into high-risk group and low-risk group. In both discovery and validation cohorts, the results of Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that there were significant differences in OS between the two groups (p<0.001). Combined with multiple clinical pathological factors, the results of multivariate analyses confirmed that this signature was an independent predictor of OS (HR, 3.548; 95%CI, 2.096−6.006; p<0.001). The results of immune infiltration analysis demonstrated that the abundance of multiple tumor-infiltration lymphocytes such as CD8+ T cells, Tregs, and T follicular cell helper were significantly higher in the high-risk group. Functional analysis showed that multiple immune-related signaling pathways were enriched in the high-risk group.Conclusions: We successfully established an individualized prognostic immune-related gene pairs signature, which can accurately and independently predict the OS of patients with PRCC.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jihang Luo ◽  
Puyu Liu ◽  
Leibo Wang ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Yuanyan Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background. Colon cancer is the most common type of gastrointestinal cancer and has high morbidity and mortality. Colon adenocarcinoma(COAD) is the main pathological type of colon cancer. There is a lot of evidence describing the correlation between the prognosis of COAD and the immune system. The objective of the current study was the development of a robust prognostic immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) model for estimating overall survival of COAD. Methods. The gene expression profiles and clinical information of patients with colon adenocarcinoma come from TCGA and GEO databases and are divided into training and validation cohorts. Immune genes were selected which show significantly association with prognosis. Results. Among 1647 immune genes, a 17 IRGPs model was built which was significantly associated with OS in the training cohort. In the training and validation data set, the IRGPs model divided patients into high-risk groups and low-risk groups, and the prognosis of the high-risk group was significantly worse(P<0.001). Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard analysis confirmed the feasibility of this model. Functional analysis confirmed that multiple tumor progression and stem cell growth-related pathways in high-risk groups were up-regulated. T cells regulatory and Macrophage M0 were significantly highly expressed in the high-risk group. Conclusion. We successfully constructed an IRGPs model that can predict the prognosis of COAD, which provides new insights into the treatment strategy of COAD.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 295-306
Author(s):  
Hansheng Wu ◽  
Shujie Huang ◽  
Weitao Zhuang ◽  
Guibin Qiao

Aim: To build a valid prognostic model based on immune-related genes for lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC). Materials & methods: Differential expression of immune-related genes between LUSC and normal specimens from TCGA dataset and underlying molecular mechanisms were systematically analyzed. Constructing and validating the high-risk and low-risk groups for LUSC survival. Results: The immune-related gene-based prognostic index (IRGPI) could predict the overall survival in patients with different clinicopathological characteristics. Functional enrichment analysis of differential expression of immune-related gene signature indicated distinctive molecular pathways between high-risk and low-risk groups. Conclusion: Analysis of IRGs in LUSC enable us to stratify patients into distinct risk groups, which may help to screen LUSC patients at risk and decision making on follow-up therapeutic intervention.


BMC Cancer ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jihang Luo ◽  
Puyu Liu ◽  
Leibo Wang ◽  
Yi Huang ◽  
Yuanyan Wang ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Colon cancer is the most common type of gastrointestinal cancer and has high morbidity and mortality. Colon adenocarcinoma (COAD) is the main pathological type of colon cancer, and much evidence has supported the correlation between the prognosis of COAD and the immune system. The current study aimed to develop a robust prognostic immune-related gene pair (IRGP) model to estimate the overall survival of patients with COAD. Methods The gene expression profiles and clinical information of patients with colon adenocarcinoma were obtained from the TCGA and GEO databases and were divided into training and validation cohorts. Immune genes were selected that showed a significant association with prognosis. Results Among 1647 immune genes, a model with 17 IRGPs was built that was significantly associated with OS in the training cohort. In the training and validation datasets, the IRGP model divided patients into the high-risk group and low-risk group, and the prognosis of the high-risk group was significantly worse (P<0.001). Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazard analyses confirmed the feasibility of this model. Functional analysis confirmed that multiple tumor progression and stem cell growth-related pathways were upregulated in the high-risk groups. Regulatory T cells and macrophages M0 were significantly highly expressed in the high-risk group. Conclusion We successfully constructed an IRGP model that can predict the prognosis of COAD, providing new insights into the treatment strategy of COAD.


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