Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common type of malignant tumor with an extremely poor prognosis. Because many HCC patients are diagnosed with advanced disease, surgical treatment is typically not possible, and other currently available treatments are often ineffective. Immunotherapy is being explored as a new treatment method for a variety of cancers, including HCC. However, there have been no systematic reports about the relationship between immune-related genes and HCC patient prognosis. In this study, we established and verified a gene set-based model to examine the relationship between immune-related genes and prognosis in HCC patients. The model was based on a dataset from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and its stability and reliability was confirmed in four verification datasets. In addition, we performed multivariate Cox regression analyses to identify the independent risk factors affecting HCC patient prognoses. We found that this new model based on immune-related genes was effective for predicting prognosis, evaluating disease state, and identifying treatment options for HCC patients.
Highlights
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), one of the most prevalent and life-threatening malignancies in the world, progresses rapidly and is difficult to treat
903 HCC patients from five datasets were included in the immune-based prognostic signature HCC (IPSHCC) analysis (Supplementary Table 1)
Those 196 genes were used as probes in single-sample gene set enrichment analysis of HCC patients to determine enrichment scores for each immune category (Figure 1)
Summary
HCC, one of the most prevalent and life-threatening malignancies in the world, progresses rapidly and is difficult to treat. Radiotherapy, and other treatment methods have modestly improved HCC patient survival rates in recent years, therapeutic outcomes are still largely unsatisfactory [4,5,6]. New treatment methods for advanced HCC are needed to improve overall survival rates. Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising potential treatment for a variety of cancers, including HCC [7, 8]. Previous research revealed that reactivation of NK cells and their cytotoxic activity against tumor cells can enhance anti-HCC effects [9]. Increasing evidence indicates that expression of immune-related genes can be associated with tumor prognosis, and prognostic signatures based on these genes might help identify effective treatments for HCC patients [14]. The relationship between immune-related www.aging-us.com genes and prognosis deserves further investigation
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