PRR7-AS1 Correlates with Immune Cell Infiltration and Is a Diagnostic and Prognostic Marker for Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive malignant disease, and numerous studies have shown that certain functional long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are implicated in the progression of several cancers. The purpose of the research was to determine, using a database, bioinformatics, and statistical analysis, whether or not lncRNA PRR7-AS1 (PRR7-AS1) was related to HCC. TCGA datasets were used to conduct research on the PRR7-AS1 expression pattern in HCC. In order to evaluate the efficacy of GIHCG as a prognostic tool, both survival and Cox regression analyses were carried out. Furthermore, an investigation of the connection between the expression of PRR7-AS1 and immune infiltration in HCC was carried out. In this study, we identified 125 lncRNAs that were significantly dysregulated in HCC and were associated with long-term survival. Among the above 125 lncRNAs, our attention focused on PRR7-AS1. We found that PRR7-AS1 expressions were distinctly overexpressed in HCC samples compared with nontumor samples. ROC assays revealed that PRR7-AS1 effectively differentiated HCC specimens from normal tissues with an AUC of 0.875 (95% CI: 0.840 to 0.911). Moreover, the high PRR7-AS1 expression was associated with advanced clinical stage and poor prognosis of HCC patients. Importantly, the multivariate Cox proportional hazards model suggested that up-expression of PRR7-AS1 was an independent prognostic marker indicating shorter overall survival and disease-specific survival for HCC patients. Finally, we found that PRR7-AS1 expression was associated with the expression of NK CD56bright cells, Th2 cells, TFH, macrophages, Th1 cells, aDC, T helper cells, cytotoxic cells, DC, Tgd, neutrophils, and Th17 cells. Overall, the results of our study show that PRR7-AS1 was a biomarker that could be utilized to predict the prognosis of HCC patients and was linked to the infiltration of immune cells in HCC.