Abstract
Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which were implicated in many pathophysiological processes including cancer, were frequently dysregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). Studies have demonstrated that ferroptosis and immunity can regulate the biological behaviors of tumors. Therefore, biomarkers that combined ferroptosis, immunity, and lncRNA can be a promising candidate bioindicator in clinical therapy of cancers. Many bioinformatics methods, including Pearson correlation analysis, univariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis, and multivariate Cox proportional hazard regression analysis were applied to develop a prognostic risk signature of immune- and ferroptosis-related lncRNA (IFLSig). Finally, eight immune- and ferroptosis-related lncRNAs (IFLncRNA) were identified to develop and IFLSig of HCC patients. We found the prognosis of patients with high IFLSig will be worse, while the prognosis of patients with low IFLSig will be better. The results provide an efficient method of uniting critical clinical information with immunological characteristics, enabling estimation of the overall survival (OS). Such an integrative prognostic model with high predictive power would have a notable impact and utility in prognosis prediction and individualized treatment strategies.
Highlights
As one of the top five leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide and the fifth most frequent in China, liver cancer still has an estimated number of 392,868 new cases and 368,960 cancer-related deaths in 2018 (Feng et al, 2019)
A total of 15,095 Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) were obtained from the TCGA database, and 681 downregulated Differential expression of lncRNA genes (DEGs) were preliminary screened (Figure 1A)
Pearson correlation analysis was performed between the lncRNAs and ferroptosis-related genes and immune-related genes
Summary
As one of the top five leading causes of cancer-related deaths worldwide and the fifth most frequent in China, liver cancer still has an estimated number of 392,868 new cases and 368,960 cancer-related deaths in 2018 (Feng et al, 2019). Individual treatment and prognosis determination of liver cancer are still major challenges. With the large-scale use of massively parallel signature sequencing technology, lncRNAs instead have shown a high correlation with liver cancer, mainly in their regulatory roles during liver carcinogenesis (Wang et al, 2015; Wang et al, 2016). These cancer-related lncRNAs participate in numerous biological processes, including epigenetic regulation, signal transduction, and cell cycle control (Yuan et al, 2017; Wu et al, 2019; Xu et al, 2019)
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