Abstract
As one of the most common malignancies in the urinary system, bladder cancer (BC) occupies a high mortality and recurrence rate. BC carries an ominous prognosis. Thus, we aimed to identify a novel immune-related prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for immunotherapy in the present study. We first constructed a co-expression network based on immune-related genes (IRGs). Two key modules showed high association with the clinical feature interested us most were further identified. Forty-five IRGs were screened out and regarded as hub genes in the co-expression network. We further constructed a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and five independent methods were used for hub gene identification. Three hub genes were identified in the present study. CD86 molecule (CD86) was screened out by performing overall survival (OS) analysis. Subsequent analyses by using some bioinformatics and experimental assays confirmed that CD86 was an immune-related prognostic biomarker, which might be a novel target for immunotherapy in BC. A small molecule drug named suloctidil was also identified, which showed potential for BC treatment.
Highlights
Bladder cancer (BC) is the most common malignant tumor in the urinary system [1]
Immunocytes have been proven to be independent predictors of survival in cancers, in this study, we investigated the relationship between expression levels of selected IRGS and immunocytes based on tumor immune estimation resource (TIMER)
By using Human Protein Atlas (HPA) database, we explored the translational-level expression of CD86, but not as we imagined, there was no significant difference between the expression in normal bladder tissue and bladder cancer tissue (Figure 6E)
Summary
Bladder cancer (BC) is the most common malignant tumor in the urinary system [1]. In 2018, about 550,000 new cases were diagnosed worldwide and about 200,000 patients died according to recent statistics from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), part of the World Health Organization (WHO) [2]. In all tumors, BC shows a very high recurrence rate (30–70%) and often progresses to more aggressive forms of BC [4]. The 5-year survival rate of BC is only 15%, which means most patients with BC have to face poor prognosis [5]. Immunotherapy has been used in a variety of tumors, such as clear cell renal cell carcinoma [6], breast cancer [7], and lung cancer [8].
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