scholarly journals Identification and Validation of an Immune-Related eRNA Prognostic Signature for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shenglan Cai ◽  
Xingwang Hu ◽  
Ruochan Chen ◽  
Yiya Zhang

BackgroundEnhancer RNAs (eRNAs) are intergenic long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that participate in the progression of malignancies by targeting tumor-related genes and immune checkpoints. However, the potential role of eRNAs in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is unclear. In this study, we aimed to construct an immune-related eRNA prognostic model that could be used to prospectively assess the prognosis of patients with HCC.MethodsGene expression profiles of patients with HCC were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). The eRNAs co-expressed from immune genes were identified as immune-related eRNAs. Cox regression analyses were applied in a training cohort to construct an immune-related eRNA signature (IReRS), that was subsequently used to analyze a testing cohort and combination of the two cohorts. Kaplan-Meier and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to validate the predictive effect in the three cohorts. Gene Set Enrishment Analysis (GSEA) computation was used to identify an IReRS-related signaling pathway. A web-based cell type identification by estimating relative subsets of RNA transcripts (CIBERSORT) computation was used to evaluate the relationship between the IReRS and infiltrating immune cells.ResultsA total of sixty-four immune-related eRNAs (IReRNAs) was identified in HCC, and 14 IReRNAs were associated with overall survival (OS). Five IReRNAs were used for constructing an immune-related eRNA signature (IReRS), which was shown to correlate with poor survival and to be an independent prognostic biomarker for HCC. The GSEA results showed that the IReRS was correlated to cancer-related and immune-related pathways. Moreover, we found that IReRS was correlated to infiltrating immune cells, including CD8+ T cells and M0 macrophages. Finally, differential expressions of the five risk IReRNAs in tumor tissues vs. adjacent normal tissues and their prognostic values were verified, in which the AL445524.1 may function as an oncogene that affects prognosis partly by regulating CD4-CLTA4 related genes.ConclusionOur results suggest that the IReRS could serve as a biomarker for predicting prognosis in patients with HCC. Additionally, it may be correlated to the tumor immune microenvironment and could also be used as a biomarker in immunotherapy for HCC.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Li ◽  
Rongrong Xie ◽  
Qichun Wei

Abstract Background: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the leading causes of mortality worldwide. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methyltransferase, has been proved to act as an oncogene in several human cancers. However, little is known about its relationship with the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) that remains elusive in HCC.Methods: We comprehensively integrated gene expression data acquired from 371 HCC and 50 normal tissues in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Differentially expressed protein-coding genes (DE-PCGs)/lncRNAs (DE-lncRs) analysis and univariate regression & Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis was performed to identify m6A methyltransferase‑related lncRNAs that were related to overall survival (OS). m6A methyltransferase‑related lncRNA signature was constructed using the Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analyses. Furthermore, Cox regression analysis was applied to identify independent prognostic factors in HCC. The signature was validated in an internal validation set. Finally, the correlation analysis between gene signature and immune cells infiltration was also investigated via single-sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (ssGSEA) and immunotherapy response was calculated through Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion (TIDE) algorithm.Results: A total of 21 m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNAs were screened out according to Spearman correlation analysis with the immune score (|R| > 0.3, P < 0.05). We selected 3 prognostic lncRNAs to construct m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNA signature through univariate and LASSO Cox regression analyses. The univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses demonstrated that the lncRNAs signature was a robust independent prognostic factor in OS prediction with high accuracy. The GSEA also suggested that the m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNAs were involved in the immune-related biological processes and pathways which were very well-known in the context of HCC tumorigenesis. Besides, we found that the lncRNAs signature was strikingly correlated with the tumor microenvironment (TME) immune cells infiltration and expression of critical immune checkpoints. Finally, results from the TIDE analysis revealed that the m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNAs could efficiently predict the clinical response of immunotherapy in HCC.Conclusion: Together, our study screened potential prognostic m6A methyltransferase related lncRNAs and established a novel m6A methyltransferase-based prognostic model of HCC, which not only provides new potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets but also deepens our understanding of tumor immune microenvironment status and lays a theoretical foundation for immunotherapy.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lili Li ◽  
Rongrong Xie ◽  
Guangrong Lu

N6-methyladenosine (m6A) methyltransferase has been shown to be an oncogene in a variety of cancers. Nevertheless, the relationship between the long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains elusive. We integrated the gene expression data of 371 HCC and 50 normal tissues from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Differentially expressed protein-coding genes (DE-PCGs)/lncRNAs (DE-lncRs) analysis and univariate regression & Kaplan-Meier (K-M) analysis were performed to identify m6A methyltransferase‑related lncRNAs. Three prognostic lncRNAs were selected by univariate and LASSO Cox regression analyses to construct the m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNA signature. Multivariate Cox regression analyses illustrated that this signature was an independent prognostic factor for overall survival (OS) prediction. The Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) suggested that the m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNAs were involved in the immune-related biological processes and pathways. Besides, we discovered that the lncRNAs signature was correlated with the tumor microenvironment (TME) and the expression of critical immune checkpoints. Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion (TIDE) analysis revealed that the lncRNAs could predict the clinical response to immunotherapy. Our study had originated a prognostic signature for HCC based on the potential prognostic m6A methyltransferase-related lncRNAs. This study had deepened the understanding of the TME status of HCC patients and laid a theoretical foundation for the choice of immunotherapy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zhuomao Mo ◽  
Daiyuan Liu ◽  
Dade Rong ◽  
Shijun Zhang

Background: Generally, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) exists in an immunosuppressive microenvironment that promotes tumor evasion. Hypoxia can impact intercellular crosstalk in the tumor microenvironment. This study aimed to explore and elucidate the underlying relationship between hypoxia and immunotherapy in patients with HCC.Methods: HCC genomic and clinicopathological datasets were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA-LIHC), Gene Expression Omnibus databases (GSE14520) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC-LIRI). The TCGA-LIHC cases were divided into clusters based on single sample gene set enrichment analysis and hierarchical clustering. After identifying patients with immunosuppressive microenvironment with different hypoxic conditions, correlations between immunological characteristics and hypoxia clusters were investigated. Subsequently, a hypoxia-associated score was established by differential expression, univariable Cox regression, and lasso regression analyses. The score was verified by survival and receiver operating characteristic curve analyses. The GSE14520 cohort was used to validate the findings of immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoints expression, while the ICGC-LIRI cohort was employed to verify the hypoxia-associated score.Results: We identified hypoxic patients with immunosuppressive HCC. This cluster exhibited higher immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoint expression in the TCGA cohort, while similar significant differences were observed in the GEO cohort. The hypoxia-associated score was composed of five genes (ephrin A3, dihydropyrimidinase like 4, solute carrier family 2 member 5, stanniocalcin 2, and lysyl oxidase). In both two cohorts, survival analysis revealed significant differences between the high-risk and low-risk groups. In addition, compared to other clinical parameters, the established score had the highest predictive performance at both 3 and 5 years in two cohorts.Conclusion: This study provides further evidence of the link between hypoxic signals in patients and immunosuppression in HCC. Defining hypoxia-associated HCC subtypes may help reveal potential regulatory mechanisms between hypoxia and the immunosuppressive microenvironment, and our hypoxia-associated score could exhibit potential implications for future predictive models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-43
Author(s):  
Beilei Wu ◽  
Lijun Tao ◽  
Daqing Yang ◽  
Wei Li ◽  
Hongbo Xu ◽  
...  

Objective. Stromal cells and immune cells have important clinical significance in the microenvironment of colorectal cancer (CRC). This study is aimed at developing a CRC gene signature on the basis of stromal and immune scores. Methods. A cohort of CRC patients (n=433) were adopted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Stromal/immune scores were calculated by the ESTIMATE algorithm. Correlation between prognosis/clinical characteristics and stromal/immune scores was assessed. Differentially expressed stromal and immune genes were identified. Their potential functions were annotated by functional enrichment analysis. Cox regression analysis was used to develop an eight-gene risk score model. Its predictive efficacies for 3 years, 5 years, overall survival (OS), and progression-free survival interval (PFI) were evaluated using time-dependent receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. The correlation between the risk score and the infiltering levels of six immune cells was analyzed using TIMER. The risk score was validated using an independent dataset. Results. Immune score was in a significant association with prognosis and clinical characteristics of CRC. 736 upregulated and two downregulated stromal and immune genes were identified, which were mainly enriched into immune-related biological processes and pathways. An-eight gene prognostic risk score model was conducted, consisting of CCL22, CD36, CPA3, CPT1C, KCNE4, NFATC1, RASGRP2, and SLC2A3. High risk score indicated a poor prognosis of patients. The area under the ROC curves (AUC) s of the model for 3 years, 5 years, OS, and PFI were 0.71, 0.70, 0.73, and 0.66, respectively. Thus, the model possessed well performance for prediction of patients’ prognosis, which was confirmed by an external dataset. Moreover, the risk score was significantly correlated with immune cell infiltration. Conclusion. Our study conducted an immune-related prognostic risk score model, which could provide novel targets for immunotherapy of CRC.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Honglan Guo ◽  
Qinqiao Fan

Background. We aimed to investigate the expression of the hyaluronan-mediated motility receptor (HMMR) gene in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and nonneoplastic tissues and to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic value of HMMR. Method. With the reuse of the publicly available The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data, 374 HCC patients and 50 nonneoplastic tissues were used to investigate the diagnostic and prognostic values of HMMR genes by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis and survival analysis. All patients were divided into low- and high-expression groups based on the median value of HMMR expression level. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analysis were used to identify prognostic factors. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) was performed to explore the potential mechanism of the HMMR genes involved in HCC. The diagnostic and prognostic values were further validated in an external cohort from the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC). Results. HMMR mRNA expression was significantly elevated in HCC tissues compared with that in normal tissues from both TCGA and the ICGC cohorts (all P values <0.001). Increased HMMR expression was significantly associated with histologic grade, pathological stage, and survival status (all P values <0.05). The area under the ROC curve for HMMR expression in HCC and normal tissues was 0.969 (95% CI: 0.948–0.983) in the TCGA cohort and 0.956 (95% CI: 0.932–0.973) in the ICGC cohort. Patients with high HMMR expression had a poor prognosis than patients with low expression group in both cohorts (all P < 0.001 ). Univariate and multivariate analysis also showed that HMMR is an independent predictor factor associated with overall survival in both cohorts (all P values <0.001). GSEA showed that genes upregulated in the high-HMMR HCC subgroup were mainly significantly enriched in the cell cycle pathway, pathways in cancer, and P53 signaling pathway. Conclusion. HMMR is expressed at high levels in HCC. HMMR overexpression may be an unfavorable prognostic factor for HCC.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Zhang ◽  
Senmiao Ni ◽  
Changxian Li ◽  
Haoming Zhou ◽  
Jianling Bai ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Liver cancer is the fourth most common cause of cancer-related death and rank sixth in terms of incident cases. We aim to identify a set of miRNAs and a miRNA-based signature related to tumorigenesis and prognosis in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: We analyzed the miRNA sequencing profiles of 373 HCC patients downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas LIHC program. The isoform quantification profiles were transformed into 5p and 3p mature miRNA names. Differentially expressed (DE) miRNAs between tumor and adjacent normal tissues were identified by Wald test based on the negative binomial distribution. Prognostic miRNAs associated with overall survival were confirmed by multivariate Cox proportional hazards models. The miRNA-based signatures were obtained from the linear predictors of cox regression, and the prognostic performance was compared by Harrel’s C-index and revealed by the restricted mean survival (RMS) curve. Results: The selected twelve DE miRNAs showed a good performance to classify tumor tissues from normal tissues. Meanwhile, a miRNA-based prognostic signature of eight mature miRNAs was constructed, which significantly stratified patients into high- vs low-risk groups in terms of overall survival (hazard ratio, 4.11; 95% CI, 2.71-6.24; P<0.001). When integrated with clinical information, the composite miRNA-clinical signature showed improved prognostic accuracy relative to the eight-miRNA signature alone. As we set the follow-up time at 5 years, the estimated RMST difference between low- and high-risk group stratified by miRNA index was 1.39 (95% CI: 0.95-1.83) months, which is lesser than the difference between miRNA-clinical risk groups (1.63, 95%CI: 1.20-2.06). Functional enrichment analysis indicated that the target mRNAs of selected miRNAs were mainly enriched in cancer-related pathways and vital cell biological processes. Conclusions: The proposed DE miRNAs and miRNA-clinical signature are promising biomarkers for discrimination and predicting overall survival respectively in HCC patients. These biomarkers may have significant relevance for development of new drug research and targeting therapies for HCC patients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xing Chen ◽  
Junjie Zheng ◽  
Min ling Zhuo ◽  
Ailong Zhang ◽  
Zhenhui You

Abstract Background: Breast cancer (BRCA) represents the most common malignancy among women worldwide that with high mortality. Radiotherapy is a prevalent therapeutic for BRCA that with heterogeneous effectiveness among patients. Methods: we proposed to develop a gene expression-based signature for BRCA radiotherapy sensitivity prediction. Gene expression profiles of BRCA samples from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) were obtained and used as training and independent testing dataset, respectively. Differential expression genes (DEGs) in BRCA tumor samples compared with their paracancerous samples in the training set were identified by using edgeR Bioconductor package followed by dimensionality reduction through autoencoder method and univariate Cox regression analysis to screen genes among DEGs that with significant prognosis significance in patients that were previously treated with radiation. LASSO Cox regression method was applied to screen optimal genes for constructing radiotherapy sensitivity prediction signature. Results: 603 DEGs were obtained in BRCA tumor samples, and seven out of which were retained after univariate cox regression analysis. LASSO Cox regression analysis finally remained six genes based on which the radiotherapy sensitivity prediction model was constructed. The signature was proved to be robust in both training and independent testing sets and an independent marker for BRCA radiotherapy sensitivity prediction. Conclusions: this study should be helpful for BRCA patients’ therapeutics selection and clinical decision.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Saadia Ait Ssi ◽  
Dounia Chraa ◽  
Khadija El Azhary ◽  
Souha Sahraoui ◽  
Daniel Olive ◽  
...  

BackgroundGlioma is the most common type of primary brain tumor in adults. Patients with the most malignant form have an overall survival time of &lt;16 months. Although considerable progress has been made in defining the adapted therapeutic strategies, measures to counteract tumor escape have not kept pace, due to the developed resistance of malignant glioma. In fact, identifying the nature and role of distinct tumor-infiltrating immune cells in glioma patients would decipher potential mechanisms behind therapy failure.MethodsWe integrated into our study glioma transcriptomic datasets from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort (154 GBM and 516 LGG patients). LM22 immune signature was built using CIBERSORT. Hierarchical clustering and UMAP dimensional reduction algorithms were applied to identify clusters among glioma patients either in an unsupervised or supervised way. Furthermore, differential gene expression (DGE) has been performed to unravel the top expressed genes among the identified clusters. Besides, we used the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and Cox regression algorithm to set up the most valuable prognostic factor.ResultsOur study revealed, following gene enrichment analysis, the presence of two distinct groups of patients. The first group, defined as cluster 1, was characterized by the presence of immune cells known to exert efficient antitumoral immune response and was associated with better patient survival, whereas the second group, cluster 2, which exhibited a poor survival, was enriched with cells and molecules, known to set an immunosuppressive pro-tumoral microenvironment. Interestingly, we revealed that gene expression signatures were also consistent with each immune cluster function. A strong presence of activated NK cells was revealed in cluster 1. In contrast, potent immunosuppressive components such as regulatory T cells, neutrophils, and M0/M1/M2 macrophages were detected in cluster 2, where, in addition, inhibitory immune checkpoints, such as PD-1, CTLA-4, and TIM-3, were also significantly upregulated. Finally, Cox regression analysis further corroborated that tumor-infiltrating cells from cluster 2 exerted a significant impact on patient prognosis.ConclusionOur work brings to light the tight implication of immune components on glioma patient prognosis. This would contribute to potentially developing better immune-based therapeutic approaches.


2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Quanwei Zhou ◽  
Xuejun Yan ◽  
Weidong Liu ◽  
Wen Yin ◽  
Hongjuan Xu ◽  
...  

Diffuse glioma is one of the most prevalent malignancies of the brain, with high heterogeneity of tumor-infiltrating immune cells. However, immune-associated subtypes of diffuse glioma have not been determined, nor has the effect of different immune-associated subtypes on disease prognosis and immune infiltration of diffuse glioma patients. We retrieved the expression profiles of immune-related genes from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) (n = 672) and GSE16011 (n = 268) cohorts and used them to identify subtypes of diffuse glioma via Consensus Cluster Plus analysis. We used the limma, clusterProfiler, ESTIMATE, and survival packages of R for differential analysis, functional enrichment, immune and stromal score evaluation respectively in three subtypes, and performed log-rank tests in immune subtypes of diffuse glioma. The immune-associated features of diffuse glioma in the two cohorts were characterized via bioinformatic analyses of the mRNA expression data of immune-related genes. Three subtypes (C1–3) of diffuse glioma were identified from TCGA data, and were verified using the GSE16011 cohort. We then evaluated their immune characteristics and clinical features. Our mRNA profiling analyses indicated that the different subtypes of diffuse glioma presented differential expression profile of specific genes and signal pathways in the TCGA cohort. Patients with subtype C1, who were mostly diagnosed with grade IV glioma, had poorer outcomes than patients with subtype C2 or C3. Subtype C1 was characterized by a higher degree of immune cell infiltration as estimated by GSVA, and more frequent wildtype IDH1. By contrast, subtype C3 included more grade II and IDH1-mutated glioma, and was associated with more infiltration of CD4+T cells. Most subtype C2 had the features between subtypes C1 and C3. Meanwhile, immune checkpoints and their ligand molecules, including PD1/(PD-L1/PDL2), CTLA4/(CD80/CD86), and B7H3/TLT2, were significantly upregulated in subtype C1 and downregulated in subtype C3. In addition, patients with subtype C1 exhibited more frequent gene mutations. Univariate and multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed that diffuse glioma subtype was an effective, independent, and better prognostic factor. Therefore, we established a novel immune-related classification of diffuse glioma, which provides potential immunotherapy targets for diffuse glioma.


2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (15_suppl) ◽  
pp. e15623-e15623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Derek L West ◽  
Aikaterini Kotrotsou ◽  
Andrew Scott Niekamp ◽  
Tagwa Idris ◽  
Dunia Giniebra Camejo ◽  
...  

e15623 Background: The utilization of computed tomography (CT) has virtually replaced the need for tissue diagnosis in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Imaging features (e.g. size, shape and vascularity) have been associated with patient survival. However, the full potential of CT in HCC diagnosis may not be reached, as high-throughput computing allows for extraction of quantitative features that are not part of radiologists’ lexicon. The purpose of this study was to investigate the ability of radiomic analysis to successfully identify specific doxorubicin chemoresistant genes on CT images of treatment-naïve hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Methods: We identified 27 treatment-naïve patients with a single HCC tumor from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) whom had gene expression profiles. Baseline CT images were obtained from The Cancer Imaging Archive (TCIA). 3D Slicer software was used for manual tumor segmentation and final segmented images were reviewed by a board-certified radiologist. Following tumor segmentation, texture analysis was performed on MATLAB environment. A total of 310 rotation invariant texture features, which measure tumor heterogeneity, were obtained (first-order histogram and grey level co-occurrence matrix). The mRMR method was used to select the most relevant radiomic features. ROC analysis and LOOCV were used to assess the performance of five specific genes known to confer doxorubicin chemoresistance (TP53, TOP2A, CTNNB1, CDKN2A and AKT1). Results: Radiomic analysis identified TP53 (AUC = 86.61%, Specificity = 92.31%, Sensitivity = 92.9%), TOP2A (AUC = 78.0%, Specificity = 69%, Sensitivity = 85.7%), CTNNB1 (AUC = 86.8%, Specificity = 92.3%, Sensitivity = 85.7%), CDKN2A (AUC = 76.9%, Specificity = 76.9%, Sensitivity = 78.6%) and AKT1 (AUC = 72.5%, Specificity = 69.2%, Sensitivity = 85.7%) in treatment-naïve HCC CT studies. Conclusions: The identification of specific genes that confer chemoresistance to doxorubicin can be reliably ascertained via the use of radiomic analysis. This study may help tailor future treatment paradigms via the ability to categorize HCC tumors on genetic level and identify tumors which may not have a favorable response to doxorubicin based therapies.


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