HSF5 Is a Prognostic Biomarker and Correlated with Immune Infiltrate in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the predominant subtype of lung cancer with a relatively poor prognosis. The dramatic improvements of new immunotherapy strategies have shown promising results in lung cancer patients. This study aimed to elucidate the functions of immune-associated genes in LUAD prognosis and pathogenesis by analyzing public databases. We obtained expression profiles of LUAD patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and applied the ESTIMATE algorithm to calculate immune scores and stromal scores. A series of microenvironment-related genes with prognostic value was then identified. Of note, HSF5 was found to be decreased in LUAD patients and positively correlated with overall survival, which was further confirmed in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Moreover, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis based on the correlated genes of HSF5 demonstrated that HSF5 expression was significantly associated with the immune response and inflammatory activities. Based on the Tumor IMmune Estimation Resource (TIMER) and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) datasets, HSF5 expression showed strong correlations with various immune cell infiltration and diverse immune marker sets. These findings suggest that HSF5 can be used as a promising biomarker for determining prognosis and immune infiltration in LUAD patients. Funding Statement: This work was supported by grants from National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grant number 81874222, 81672978 and 81874233]. Declaration of Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest.