A novel prognostic signature of immune-related lncRNA pairs in lung adenocarcinoma

Yang Liu,Jinming Yu,Qinghua Zhou,Xuejiao Fan,Qiuhong Wu,Hui Zhu,Wen Li,Xiaogang Li

doi:10.1038/s41598-021-96236-4

Abstract

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common subtype of lung cancer, but the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unsatisfactory. Here, we retrieved the RNA-seq data of LUAD cohort from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and then identified differentially expressed immune-related lncRNAs (DEirlncRNAs) between LUAD and normal controls. Based on a new method of cyclically single pairing along with a 0-or-1 matrix, we constructed a novel prognostic signature of 8 DEirlncRNA pairs in LUAD with no dependence upon specific expression levels of lncRNAs. This prognostic model exhibited significant power in distinguishing good or poor prognosis of LUAD patients and the values of the area under the curve (AUC) were all over 0.70 in 1, 3, 5 years receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Moreover, the risk score of the model could serve as an independent prognostic factor for patients with LUAD. In addition, the risk model was significantly associated with clinicopathological characteristics, tumor-infiltrating immune cells, immune-related molecules and sensitivity of anti-tumor drugs. This novel signature of DEirlncRNA pairs in LUAD, which did not require specific expression levels of lncRNAs, might be used to guide the administration of patients with LUAD in clinical practice.

Highlights

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common subtype of lung cancer, but the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unsatisfactory
The intersection of DEirlncRNAs between LUAD and LUSC was analyzed using the Venny 2.1.0 online database, and there were only 15 overlapping DEirlncRNAs between LUAD and LUSC (Fig. 1C and Supplementary Table S5). These results indicated that the DEirlncRNAs of LUAD identified in this study had high specificity in LUAD
LUAD accounts for nearly 40% of all lung cancer cases, and the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unsatisfactory[2,5]

Summary

Introduction

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common subtype of lung cancer, but the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unsatisfactory. The risk model was significantly associated with clinicopathological characteristics, tumor-infiltrating immune cells, immune-related molecules and sensitivity of anti-tumor drugs. This novel signature of DEirlncRNA pairs in LUAD, which did not require specific expression levels of lncRNAs, might be used to guide the administration of patients with LUAD in clinical practice. By using the gene expression data and clinical data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), Miao et al constructed a signature of immune-related six-lncRNAs to predict the OS of patients with LUAD and this signature could act as an independent prognostic factor[18]. Since different experimental platforms and batches may lead to the heterogeneity of gene expression data, it is inappropriate to apply one gene signature from specific platform to another gene expression data without normalization and correction, limiting the clinical application values of these lncRNA signatures

Methods

Results

Conclusion