Bioinformatics analysis reveals the ceRNA co-expression network in tumor microenvironment and prognostic biomarkers in Sarcomas

Abstract

Background Sarcomas (SARCs) are rare, heterogeneous mesenchymal neoplasia. To understand the tumor microenviroment (TME) and identify potential biomarkers for prognosis that associated with TME of SARCs might provide effective clues for immune therapy. Methods We evaluated the immune scores and stromal scores by using the RNA sequencing dataset of SARCs patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and the ESTIMATE algorithm. Then the differentially expressed mRNAs (DEGs), miRNAs (DEMs) and lncRNAs (DELs) were filtered after comparing the two high- and low- scores groups. Next, based on these DERNAs, we established a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) network and explored the prognostic roles of biomarkers involved in the network with the help of bioinformatics analysis. Results High immune scores were significantly associated with favorable overall survival of SARCs patients. Next, a total of 328 DEGs, 18 DEMs and 67 DELs that commonly regulated in the immune and stromal scores groups were obtained. And for the DEGs, some of the Gene Ontology (GO) terms and pathways were mainly associated with immune processes. A ceRNA network were constructed with 142 nodes and 424 edges, in which hsa-miR-9-5p, hsa-miR-490-3p, hsa-miR-133a-3p, hsa-miR-133b and hsa-miR-129-5p were the top 5 nodes. Additionally, the protein-protein Interaction (PPI) network identified MMP9, TYROBP, CSF1, CXCR4, FBN1, FLNA, PDGFRB, CYBB, FCGR3A and MYH11 as hub nodes with considerable importance that functioned in the network. Finally, the Kaplan-Meier survival analysis demonstrated that 9 mRNAs (APOL1, EFEMP1, LYZ, MEDAG, MYH11, RARRES1, TNFAIP2, TNFSF10 and ZNF385A), 2 miRNAs (hsa-miR-9-5p and hsa-miR-183-5p) and 3 lncRNAs (CTD-2228K2.7, HOTAIRM1 and NCF1C) were closely associated with the overall survival of SARCs patients. Conclusions Taken together, our study confirmed that the prognosis value of immune scores for SARCs patients, also we identified a list of TME-related biomarkers which might contribute to prognostic prediction and help improve the efficacy of immune therapy.