scholarly journals A Ferroptosis-Related Signature Robustly Predicts Clinical Outcomes and Associates With Immune Microenvironment for Thyroid Cancer

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingqin Ge ◽  
Jie Niu ◽  
Ping Hu ◽  
Aihua Tong ◽  
Yan Dai ◽  
...  

Objective: This study aimed to construct a prognostic ferroptosis-related signature for thyroid cancer and probe into the association with tumor immune microenvironment.Methods: Based on the expression profiles of ferroptosis-related genes, a LASSO cox regression model was established for thyroid cancer. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was presented between high and low risk groups. The predictive performance was assessed by ROC. The predictive independency was validated via multivariate cox regression analysis and stratified analysis. A nomogram was established and verified by calibration curves. The enriched signaling pathways were predicted via GSEA. The association between the signature and immune cell infiltration was analyzed by CIBERSORT. The ferroptosis-related genes were validated in thyroid cancer tissues by immunohistochemistry and RT-qPCR.Results: A ferroptosis-related eight gene model was established for predicting the prognosis of thyroid cancer. Patients with high risk score indicated a poorer prognosis than those with low risk score (p = 1.186e-03). The AUCs for 1-, 2-, and 3-year survival were 0.887, 0.890, and 0.840, respectively. Following adjusting other prognostic factors, the model could independently predict the prognosis (p = 0.015, HR: 1.870, 95%CI: 1.132–3.090). A nomogram combining the signature and age was constructed. The nomogram-predicted probability of 1-, 3-, and 5-year survival approached the actual survival time. Several ferroptosis-related pathways were enriched in the high-risk group. The signature was distinctly associated with the immune cell infiltration. After validation, the eight genes were abnormally expressed between thyroid cancer and control tissues.Conclusion: Our findings established a prognostic ferroptosis-related signature that was associated with the immune microenvironment for thyroid cancer.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weilong Xu ◽  
Wei Niu

Abstract Background:Osteosarcoma is one of the most common bone malignant tumors in children and young adults. Inflammatory response in the microenvironment which acts as active cross-talk signals between host and tumor may play a vital role in osteosarcoma. In present study, bioinformatics algorithms were applied to establish inflammatory response-related genes (IRG) signature to improve prognosis prediction in osteosarcoma.Methods:Clinical and mRNA expression profiles data of osteosarcoma patients were collected via Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and Therapeutically Applicable Research to Generate Effective Treatments (TARGET) databases. Prognostic values of IRG were evaluated via univariate and LASSO Cox regression analysis and combined to construct risk siganture. Relationship between immune cell infiltration and signature was investigated in present study. Single-sample gene set enrichment analysis was implemented to calculate immune related pathway activity and immune cell infiltration score. Results:We found 17 IRG were correlated with overall survival (OS). From LASSO Cox regression analyses, 11 IRG were identified as candidate genes to combine into risk score formulas. Patients were divided into high and low risk subgroups. patients in low-risk subgroup had a significantly better OS than patients in high-risk according to Kaplan-Meier curve result. In addition, gene set variation analysis of risk stratification may explain the different survival. Immune infiltration result demonstrated that high risk subgroups had lower levels of key antitumor infiltrating immune cells and antitumor immunity.Conclusion:The present study established IRG signature to act as a robust predictor of prognosis and a novel therapeutic target for treatment in osteosarcoma.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pu Wu ◽  
Jinyuan Shi ◽  
Wei Sun ◽  
Hao Zhang

Abstract Background Pyroptosis is a form of programmed cell death triggered by inflammasomes. However, the roles of pyroptosis-related genes in thyroid cancer (THCA) remain still unclear. Objective This study aimed to construct a pyroptosis-related signature that could effectively predict THCA prognosis and survival. Methods A LASSO Cox regression analysis was performed to build a prognostic model based on the expression profile of each pyroptosis-related gene. The predictive value of the prognostic model was validated in the internal cohort. Results A pyroptosis-related signature consisting of four genes was constructed to predict THCA prognosis and all patients were classified into high- and low-risk groups. Patients with a high-risk score had a poorer overall survival (OS) than those in the low-risk group. The area under the curve (AUC) of the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curves assessed and verified the predictive performance of this signature. Multivariate analysis showed the risk score was an independent prognostic factor. Tumor immune cell infiltration and immune status were significantly higher in low-risk groups, which indicated a better response to immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs). Of the four pyroptosis-related genes in the prognostic signature, qRT-PCR detected three of them with significantly differential expression in THCA tissues. Conclusion In summary, our pyroptosis-related risk signature may have an effective predictive and prognostic capability in THCA. Our results provide a potential foundation for future studies of the relationship between pyroptosis and the immunotherapy response.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
BO SONG ◽  
Lijun Tian ◽  
Fan Zhang ◽  
Zheyu Lin ◽  
Boshen Gong ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: Thyroid cancer (TC) is the most common endocrine malignancy worldwide. The incidence of TC is high and increasing worldwide due to continuous improvements in diagnostic technology. TC is still often overtreated due to a lack of reliable diagnostic biomarkers. Therefore, determining accurate prognostic predictions to stratify TC patients is important.Methods: Raw data were downloaded from the TCGA database, and pairwise comparisons were applied to identify differentially expressed immune-related lncRNA (DEirlncRNA) pairs. Then, we used univariate Cox regression analysis and a modified Lasso algorithm on these pairs to construct a risk assessment model for TC. Next, TC patients were assigned to high- and low-risk groups based on the optimal cutoff score of the model for the 1-year ROC curve. We evaluated the signature in terms of prognostic independence, predictive value, immune cell infiltration, ICI-related molecules and small-molecule inhibitor efficacy. Results: We identified 30 DEirlncRNA pairs through Lasso regression, and 14 pairs served as the novel predictive signature. The high-risk group had a significantly poorer prognosis than the low-risk group. Cox regression analysis revealed that this immune-related signature can predict prognosis independently and reliably for TC. With the CIBERSORT algorithm, we found an association between the signature and immune cell infiltration. Additionally, several immune checkpoint inhibitor (ICI)-related molecules, such as PD-1 and PD-L1, showed a negative correlation with the high-risk group. We further found that some commonly used small-molecule inhibitors, such as sunitinib, were related to this new signature. Conclusions: We constructed a prognostic immune-related lncRNA signature that can predict TC patient survival without considering the technical bias of different platforms, and this signature also sheds light on TC overall prognosis and novel clinical treatments, such as ICB therapy and small molecular inhibitors.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chen-jie Qiu ◽  
Xue-bing Wang ◽  
Zi-ruo Zheng ◽  
Chao-zhi Yang ◽  
Kai Lin ◽  
...  

Abstract Background: The purpose of this study was to identify ferroptosis-related genes (FRGs) associated with the prognosis of pancreatic cancer and to construct a prognostic model based on FRGs. Methods: Based on pancreatic cancer data obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, we established the prognostic model from 232 FRGs. A nomogram was constructed by combining the prognostic model and clinicopathological features. Gene Expression Omnibus datasets and tissue samples obtained from our center were utilized to validate the model. Relationship between risk score and immune cell infiltration was explored by CIBERSORT and TIMER.Results: The prognostic model was established based on four FRGs (ENPP2, ATG4D, SLC2A1 and MAP3K5) and can be an independent risk factor in pancreatic cancer (HR 1.648, 95% CI 1.335-2.035, p < 0.001). Based on the median risk score, patients were divided into a high-risk group and a low-risk group. The prognosis of the low-risk group was significantly better than that of the high-risk group. In the high-risk group, patients treated with chemotherapy had a better prognosis. The nomogram showed that the model was the most important element. Gene set enrichment analysis identified three key pathways, namely, TGFβ signaling, HIF signaling pathway and adherens junction. The prognostic model can also affect the immune cell infiltration, such as macrophages M0, M1, CD4+T cell and CD8+T cell. Conclusion: A ferroptosis-related prognostic model can be employed to predict the prognosis of pancreatic cancer. Ferroptosis can be an important marker and immunotherapy can be a potential therapeutic target for pancreatic cancer.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fei Li ◽  
Dongcen Ge ◽  
Shu-lan Sun

Abstract Background. Ferroptosis is a newly discovered form of cell death characterized by iron-dependent lipid peroxidation. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between ferroptosis and the prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD).Methods. RNA-seq data was collected from the LUAD dataset of The Cancer Genome Altas (TCGA) database. We used ferroptosis-related genes as the basis, and identify the differential expression genes (DEGs) between cancer and paracancer. The univariate Cox regression analysis were used to screen the prognostic-related genes. We divided the patients into training and validation sets. Then, we screened out key genes and built a 5 genes prognostic prediction model by the applications of the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) 10-fold cross-validation and the multi-variate Cox regression analysis. We divided the cases by the median value of risk score and validated this model in the validation set. Meanwhile, we analyzed the somatic mutations, and estimated the score of immune infiltration in the high- and low-risk groups, as well as performed functional enrichment analysis of DEGs.Results. The result revealed that the high-risk score triggered the worse prognosis. The maximum area under curve (AUC) of the training set and the validation set of in this study was 0.7 and 0.69. Moreover, we integrated the age, gender, and tumor stage to construct the composite nomogram. The charts indicated that the AUC of cases with survival time of 1, 3 and 5 years are 0.698, 0.71 and 0.73. In addition, the mutation frequency of patients in the high-risk group was higher than that in the low-risk group. Simultaneously, DEGs were mainly enriched in ferroptosis-related pathways by analyzing the functional results.Conclusion. This study constructed a novel LUAD prognosis prediction model base on 5 ferroptosis-related genes, which can provide a prognostic evaluation tool for the clinical therapeutic decision.


BMC Cancer ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jinzhi Lai ◽  
Hainan Yang ◽  
Tianwen Xu

Abstract Background Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is a relatively rare and highly lethal tumor with few treatment options. Thus, it is important to identify prognostic markers that can help clinicians diagnose mesothelioma earlier and assess disease activity more accurately. Alternative splicing (AS) events have been recognized as critical signatures for tumor diagnosis and treatment in multiple cancers, including MM. Methods We systematically examined the AS events and clinical information of 83 MM samples from TCGA database. Univariate Cox regression analysis was used to identify AS events associated with overall survival. LASSO analyses followed by multivariate Cox regression analyses were conducted to construct the prognostic signatures and assess the accuracy of these prognostic signatures by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and Kaplan–Meier survival analyses. The ImmuCellAI and ssGSEA algorithms were used to assess the degrees of immune cell infiltration in MM samples. The survival-related splicing regulatory network was established based on the correlation between survival-related AS events and splicing factors (SFs). Results A total of 3976 AS events associated with overall survival were identified by univariate Cox regression analysis, and ES events accounted for the greatest proportion. We constructed prognostic signatures based on survival-related AS events. The prognostic signatures proved to be an efficient predictor with an area under the curve (AUC) greater than 0.9. Additionally, the risk score based on 6 key AS events proved to be an independent prognostic factor, and a nomogram composed of 6 key AS events was established. We found that the risk score was significantly decreased in patients with the epithelioid subtype. In addition, unsupervised clustering clearly showed that the risk score was associated with immune cell infiltration. The abundances of cytotoxic T (Tc) cells, natural killer (NK) cells and T-helper 17 (Th17) cells were higher in the high-risk group, whereas the abundances of induced regulatory T (iTreg) cells were lower in the high-risk group. Finally, we identified 3 SFs (HSPB1, INTS1 and LUC7L2) that were significantly associated with MM patient survival and then constructed a regulatory network between the 3 SFs and survival-related AS to reveal potential regulatory mechanisms in MM. Conclusion Our study provided a prognostic signature based on 6 key events, representing a better effective tumor-specific diagnostic and prognostic marker than the TNM staging system. AS events that are correlated with the immune system may be potential therapeutic targets for MM.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tao Han ◽  
Zhifan Zuo ◽  
Meilin Qu ◽  
Yinghui Zhou ◽  
Qing Li ◽  
...  

Background: Although low-grade glioma (LGG) has a good prognosis, it is prone to malignant transformation into high-grade glioma. It has been confirmed that the characteristics of inflammatory factors and immune microenvironment are closely related to the occurrence and development of tumors. It is necessary to clarify the role of inflammatory genes and immune infiltration in LGG.Methods: We downloaded the transcriptome gene expression data and corresponding clinical data of LGG patients from the TCGA and GTEX databases to screen prognosis-related differentially expressed inflammatory genes with the difference analysis and single-factor Cox regression analysis. The prognostic risk model was constructed by LASSO Cox regression analysis, which enables us to compare the overall survival rate of high- and low-risk groups in the model by Kaplan–Meier analysis and subsequently draw the risk curve and survival status diagram. We analyzed the accuracy of the prediction model via ROC curves and performed GSEA enrichment analysis. The ssGSEA algorithm was used to calculate the score of immune cell infiltration and the activity of immune-related pathways. The CellMiner database was used to study drug sensitivity.Results: In this study, 3 genes (CALCRL, MMP14, and SELL) were selected from 9 prognosis-related differential inflammation genes through LASSO Cox regression analysis to construct a prognostic risk model. Further analysis showed that the risk score was negatively correlated with the prognosis, and the ROC curve showed that the accuracy of the model was better. The age, grade, and risk score can be used as independent prognostic factors (p &lt; 0.001). GSEA analysis confirmed that 6 immune-related pathways were enriched in the high-risk group. We found that the degree of infiltration of 12 immune cell subpopulations and the scores of 13 immune functions and pathways in the high-risk group were significantly increased by applying the ssGSEA method (p &lt; 0.05). Finally, we explored the relationship between the genes in the model and the susceptibility of drugs.Conclusion: This study analyzed the correlation between the inflammation-related risk model and the immune microenvironment. It is expected to provide a reference for the screening of LGG prognostic markers and the evaluation of immune response.


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 &lt; 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.


2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qiaonan Guo ◽  
Pengjun Qiu ◽  
Kelun Pan ◽  
Jianpeng Chen ◽  
Jianqing Lin

Abstract Background: Exosomes are nanosized vesicles, play a vital role in breast cancer (BC) occurrence, development, invasion, metastasis, and drug resistance. Nevertheless, studies about exosome-related genes in breast cancer are limited. Besides, the interaction between the exosomes and tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) in BC are still unclear. Hence, we procced to study the potential prognostic value of exosome-related genes and their relationship to immune microenvironment in BC. Methods: 121 exosome-related genes were provided by ExoBCD database and 7 final genes were selected from the intersection of 33 differential expression genes (DEGs) and 19 prognostic genes in BC. Based on the expression levels of the 7 genes, downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, as well as the regression coefficients, the exosome-related signature was constructed. As a result, the patients in TCGA and GEO database were separated into low- and high- risk groups, respectively. Subsequently, R clusterProfiler package was applied to identify the distinct enrichment pathways between high-risk group and low-risk group. The ESTIMATE method was used to calculate ESTIMATE Score and CIBERSORT was applied to evaluate the immune cell infiltration. Eventually, the different expression levels of immune checkpoint related genes were analyzed between the two risk groups. Results: Results of BC prognosis vary from different risk groups. The low-risk groups were identified with higher survival rate both in TCGA and GEO cohort. The DEGs between high- and low- risk groups were found to enrich in immunity, biological processes, and inflammation pathways. The BC patients with higher ESTIMATE scores were revealed to have better overall survival (OS). Subsequently, CD8+ T cells, naive B cells, CD4+ resting memory T cells, monocytes, and neutrophils were upregulated, while M0 macrophages and M2 macrophages were downregulated in the low-risk group. At last, 4 genes reported as the targets of immune checkpoint inhibitors were further analyzed. The low-risk groups in TCGA and GEO cohorts were indicated with higher expression levels of LAG-3, CD274, TIGIT and CTLA-4. Conclusion: According to this study, exosomes are closely associated with the prognosis and immune cell infiltration of BC patients. These findings may make contributions to improve immunotherapy and bring a new sight for BC treatment strategies.


2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (5) ◽  
pp. 6709-6723
Author(s):  
Xin Yu ◽  
◽  
Jun Liu ◽  
Ruiwen Xie ◽  
Mengling Chang ◽  
...  

<abstract> <sec><title>Objective</title><p>We aimed to construct a novel prognostic model based on N6-methyladenosine (m6A)-related autophagy genes for predicting the prognosis of lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC).</p> </sec> <sec><title>Methods</title><p>Gene expression profiles and clinical information of Patients with LUSC were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. In addition, m6A- and autophagy-related gene profiles were obtained from TCGA and Human Autophagy Database, respectively. Pearson correlation analysis was performed to identify the m6A-related autophagy genes, and univariate Cox regression analysis was conducted to screen for genes associated with prognosis. Based on these genes, LASSO Cox regression analysis was used to construct a prognostic model. The corresponding prognostic score (PS) was calculated, and patients with LUSC were assigned to low- and high-risk groups according to the median PS value. An independent dataset (GSE37745) was used to validate the prognostic ability of the model. CIBERSORT was used to calculate the differences in immune cell infiltration between the high- and low-risk groups.</p> </sec> <sec><title>Results</title><p>Seven m6A-related autophagy genes were screened to construct a prognostic model: <italic>CASP4</italic>, <italic>CDKN1A</italic>, <italic>DLC1</italic>, <italic>ITGB1</italic>, <italic>PINK1</italic>, <italic>TP63</italic>, and <italic>EIF4EBP1</italic>. In the training and validation sets, patients in the high-risk group had worse survival times than those in the low-risk group; the areas under the receiver operating characteristic curves were 0.958 and 0.759, respectively. There were differences in m6A levels and immune cell infiltration between the high- and low-risk groups.</p> </sec> <sec><title>Conclusions</title><p>Our prognostic model of the seven m6A-related autophagy genes had significant predictive value for LUSC; thus, these genes may serve as autophagy-related therapeutic targets in clinical practice.</p> </sec> </abstract>


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