TFRC, associated with hypoxia and immune, is a prognostic factor and potential therapeutic target for bladder cancer.
Bladder cancer is a common malignancy of the urinary system, and the survival rate and recurrence rate of patients with muscular aggressive (MIBC) bladder cancer are not ideal. Hypoxia is a pathological process in which cells acquire special characteristics to adapt to anoxic environment, which can directly affect the proliferation, invasion and immune response of bladder cancer cells. Understanding the exact effects of hypoxia and immune-related genes in BLCA is helpful for early assessment of the prognosis of BLCA. However, the prognostic model of BLCA based on hypoxia and immune-related genes has not been reported.
Hypoxia and immune cell have important role in the prognosis of bladder cancer (BLCA). The aim of this study was to investigate whether hypoxia and immune related genes could be a novel tools to predict the overall survival and immunotherapy of BLCA patients.
First, we downloaded transcriptomic data and clinical information of BLCA patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) databases. A combined hypoxia and immune signature was then constructed on the basis of the training cohort via least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) analysis and validated in test cohort. Afterwards, Kaplan-Meier curves, univariate and multivariate Cox and subgroup analysis were employed to assess the accuracy of our signature. Immune cell infiltration, checkpoint and the Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion (TIDE) algorithm were used to investigate the immune environment and immunotherapy of BLCA patients. Furthermore, we confirmed the role of TFRC in bladder cancer cell lines T24 and UMUC-3 through cell experiments.
A combined hypoxia and immune signature containing 8 genes were successfully established. High-risk group in both training and test cohorts had significantly poorer OS than low-risk group. Univariate and multivariate Cox analysis indicated our signature could be regarded as an independent prognostic factor. Different checkpoint was differently expressed between two groups, including CTLA4, HAVCR2, LAG3, PD-L1 and PDCD1. TIDE analysis indicated high-risk patients had poor response to immunotherapy and easier to have immune escape. The drug sensitivity analysis showed that high-risk group patients were more potentially sensitive to many drugs. Meanwhile, TFRC could inhibit the proliferation and invasion ability of T24 and UMUC-3 cells.
A combined hypoxia and immune-related gene could be a novel predictive model for OS and immunotherapy estimation of BLCA patients and TFRC could be used as a potential therapeutic target in the future.
Tang R
,Wang H
,Liu J
,Song L
,Hou H
,Liu M
,Wang J
,Wang J
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Construction and validation of a prognostic model for bladder cancer based on disulfidptosis-related lncRNAs.
Bladder cancer (BLCA) is a prevalent and aggressive cancer associated with high mortality and poor prognosis. Currently, studies on the role of disulfidptosis-related long non-coding RNAs (DRLs) in BLCA are limited. This study aims to construct a prognostic model based on DRLs to improve the accuracy of survival predictions for patients and identify novel targets for therapeutic intervention in BLCA management.
Transcriptomic and clinical datasets for patients with BLCA were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Using multivariate Cox regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator techniques, a risk prognostic signature defined by DRLs was developed. The model's accuracy and prognostic relevance were assessed through Kaplan-Meier survival plots, receiver operating characteristic curves, concordance index, and principal component analysis. Functional and pathway enrichment analyses, including Gene Ontology, Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes, and Gene Set Enrichment Analysis, were conducted to elucidate the underlying biological processes. Immune cell infiltration was quantified using the CIBERSORT algorithm. Differences and functions of immune cells in different risk groups were evaluated through single-sample Gene Set Enrichment Analysis. The Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion predictor and tumor mutational burden (TMB) assessments were utilized to gauge the likelihood of response to immunotherapy. Drug sensitivity predictions were made using the Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer database.
A robust 8-DRL risk prognostic model, comprising LINC00513, SMARCA5-AS1, MIR4435-2HG, MIR4713HG, AL122035.1, AL359762.3, AC006160.1, and AL590428.1, was identified as an independent prognostic indicator. This model demonstrated strong predictive power for overall survival in patients with BLCA, revealing significant disparities between high- and low-risk groups regarding tumor microenvironment, immune infiltration, immune functions, TMB, Tumor Immune Dysfunction and Exclusion scores, and drug susceptibility.
This study introduces an innovative prognostic signature of 8 DRLs, offering a valuable prognostic tool and potential therapeutic targets for bladder carcinoma. The findings have significant implications for TMB, the immune landscape, and patient responsiveness to immunotherapy and targeted treatments.
Yang X
,Zhang Y
,Liu J
,Feng Y
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Comprehensive FGFR3 alteration-related transcriptomic characterization is involved in immune infiltration and correlated with prognosis and immunotherapy response of bladder cancer.
Bladder cancer (BC) threatens the health of human beings worldwide because of its high recurrence rate and mortality. As an actionable biomarker, fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) alterations have been revealed as a vital biomarker and associated with favorable outcomes in BC. However, the comprehensive relationship between the FGFR3 alteration associated gene expression profile and the prognosis of BC remains ambiguous.
Genomic alteration profile, gene expression data, and related clinical information of BC patients were downloaded from The Cancer Genomics database (TCGA), as a training cohort. Subsequently, the Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis (WGCNA) was conducted to identify the hub modules correlated with FGFR3 alteration. The univariate, multivariate, and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox regression analyses were used to obtain an FGFR3 alteration-related gene (FARG) prognostic signature and FARG-based nomogram. The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis was used for evaluation of the ability of prognosis prediction. The FARG signature was validated in four independent datasets, namely, GSE13507, GSE31684, GSE32548, and GSE48075, from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). Then, clinical feature association analysis, functional enrichment, genomic alteration enrichment, and tumor environment analysis were conducted to reveal differential clinical and molecular characterizations in different risk groups. Lastly, the treatment response was evaluated in the immunotherapy-related dataset of the IMvigor210 cohort and the frontline chemotherapy dataset of GSE48276, and the chemo-drug sensitivity was estimated via Genomics of Drug Sensitivity in Cancer (GDSC).
There were a total of eleven genes (CERCAM, TPST1, OSBPL10, EMP1, CYTH3, NCRNA00201, PCDH10, GAP43, COLQ, DGKB, and SETBP1) identified in the FARG signature, which divided BC patients from the TCGA cohort into high- and low-risk groups. The Kaplan-Meier curve analysis demonstrated that BC patients in the low-risk group have superior overall survival (OS) than those in the high-risk group (median OS: 27.06 months vs. 104.65 months, p < 0.0001). Moreover, the FARG signature not only showed a good performance in prognosis prediction, but also could distinguish patients with different neoplasm disease stages, notably whether patients presented with muscle invasive phenotype. Compared to clinicopathological features, the FARG signature was found to be the only independent prognostic factor, and subsequently, a FARG-based prognostic nomogram was constructed with better ability of prognosis prediction, indicated by area under ROC curve (AUC) values for 1-, 3-, and 5-year OS of 0.69, 0.71, and 0.79, respectively. Underlying the FARG signature, multiple kinds of metabolism- and immune-related signaling pathways were enriched. Genomic alteration enrichment further identified that FGFR3 alterations, especially c.746C>G (p.Ser249Cys), were more prevalent in the low-risk group. Additionally, FARG score was positively correlated with ESTIMATE and TIDE scores, and the low-risk group had abundant enrichment of plasma B cells, CD8+ T cells, CD4+ naive T cells, and helper follicular T cells, implying that patients in the low-risk group were likely to make significant responses to immunotherapy, which was further supported by the analysis in the IMvigor210 cohort as there was a significantly higher response rate among patients with lower FARG scores. The analysis of the GDSC database finally demonstrated that low-risk samples were more sensitive to methotrexate and tipifarnib, whereas those in the high-risk group had higher sensitivities in cisplatin, docetaxel, and paclitaxel, instead.
The novel established FARG signature based on a comprehensive FGFR3 alteration-related transcriptomic profile performed well in prognosis prediction and was also correlated with immunotherapy and chemotherapy treatment responses, which had great potential in future clinical applications.
Xu T
,Xu W
,Zheng Y
,Li X
,Cai H
,Xu Z
,Zou Q
,Yu B
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《Frontiers in Immunology》