Applying immune-related lncRNA pairs to construct a prognostic signature and predict the immune landscape of stomach adenocarcinoma

ABSTRACT

Background: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are associated with the survival of cancer patients. We constructed an immune-related lncRNA (irlncRNA) pair signature for stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD).

Research design and methods: irlncRNAs were identified via coexpression analysis with immune-related genes. Differentially expressed irlncRNAs (DEirlncRNAs) were paired. Least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression methods were used to construct the signature. We calculated the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and determined the best cutoff value according to the Akaike information criterion (AIC). Patients were divided into high – and low-risk groups, and differences in immune cell infiltration, tumor mutation burden (TMB) and drug treatment effects between the groups were explored according to the risk score.

Results: An 8-irlncRNA-pair signature was constructed and proven to be a strong prognosis predictor in STAD patients through external verification. Moreover, the risk score was identified as an independent prognostic factor. There were significant differences in immune cell infiltration and the response to several drug treatments between patients with high and low risk scores, and the risk score was negatively correlated with TMB.

Conclusions: The signature consisting of 8 irlncRNA pairs showed good prognostic predictive value.

KEYWORDS:

• Lncrna
• prognosis
• signature
• stomach adenocarcinoma
• tcga

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank American Journal Experts for their assistance with language editing.

Declaration of interest

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

Ethical approval

All analyses in the current study were aligned with established medical ethics guidelines.

Informed consent

The current study is based on a publicly available dataset. Thus, informed consent was not needed.

Data availability statement

RNA-seq and clinical information for each sample were downloaded from the GEO website (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) and TCGA website (https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/).

Reviewer disclosures

Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the Science and Technology Department of Sichuan Province (2018JY0389 and 2019YFS0443).