Abstract
Background Deciphering the immune characteristics within tumors and identifying the immune signals related to the prognostic factor are helpful for the treatment and management of tumor patients. However, systematic analysis of immune signatures in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains largely unstudied. Methods A total of 718 immune-related genes were extracted from RNA sequencing data from 519 HNSCC patients in the TCGA database, and survival analysis with integrated bioinformatics analyses was performed to build the final predictive prognosis model. Results The 178 survival-associated genes (P < 0.05) participated in important immune functions, including immune cell activation and migration. Multivariate regression analysis using 93 genes (P < 0.01), together with survival-associated clinicopathological parameters, identified 35 independent prognostic factors. The most significant 8 independent factors were CD3E, CD40LG, TNFRSF4, CD3G, CD5, ITGA2B, ABCB1, and TNFRSF13b. The final prognostic model achieved outstanding predictive efficiency with the highest AUC of 0.963. Conclusion Our prognostic model based on the immune signature could effectively predict the prognosis of HNSCC patients, providing novel predictive biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for HNSCC patients.
Highlights
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), including tumors generated in the oral cavity, oropharynx, larynx, or hypopharynx, is the sixth most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide, with only a 40–50% 5-year survival rate [1]
Relationships between clinical parameters and outcomes of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients were tested to verify the effectiveness of the survival data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort
The results showed 178 genes (P < 0:05) and 93 genes (P < 0:01) that were significantly associated with the overall survival of HNSCC patients
Summary
Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC), including tumors generated in the oral cavity, oropharynx, larynx, or hypopharynx, is the sixth most frequently diagnosed cancer worldwide, with only a 40–50% 5-year survival rate [1]. Deciphering the immune characteristics within tumors and identifying the immune signals related to the prognostic factor are helpful for the treatment and management of tumor patients. Systematic analysis of immune signatures in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) remains largely unstudied. A total of 718 immune-related genes were extracted from RNA sequencing data from 519 HNSCC patients in the TCGA database, and survival analysis with integrated bioinformatics analyses was performed to build the final predictive prognosis model. Multivariate regression analysis using 93 genes (P < 0:01), together with survival-associated clinicopathological parameters, identified 35 independent prognostic factors. Our prognostic model based on the immune signature could effectively predict the prognosis of HNSCC patients, providing novel predictive biomarkers and potential therapeutic targets for HNSCC patients
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