A Novel Prognostic Signature of Immune-related lncRNA Pairs in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the most common subtype of lung cancer, but the prognosis of LUAD patients remains unsatisfactory. Here, we retrieved the RNA-seq data of LUAD cohort from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and then identified differentially expressed immune-related lncRNA (DEirlncRNA) pairs between LUAD and normal controls. Based on the novel method of cyclically single pairing along with a 0-or-1 matrix, we constructed a novel prognostic signature of 8 DEirlncRNA pairs in LUAD with no dependence upon specific expression levels of lncRNAs. The prognostic model exhibited significant power in distinguishing good or poor prognosis of LUAD patients and values of the area under the curve (AUC) were all over 0.70 in 1, 3, 5 years ROC curves. Moreover, the risk model was significantly associated with clinicopathological characteristics, tumor-infiltrating immune cells, immune-related molecules and sensitivity of anti-tumor drugs. This novel signature of DEirlncRNA pairs in LUAD, which did not require specific expression levels of lncRNAs, might be used to guide the administration of patients with LUAD in clinical practice.