Development and validation of an immune-related gene pairs signature in colorectal cancer

Abstract

Although the outcome of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients has improved significantly with the recent implementation of annual screening programs, reliable prognostic biomarkers are still needed due to the disease heterogeneity. Increasing pieces of evidence revealed an association between immune signature and CRC prognosis. Thus, we aim to build a robust immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) signature that can estimate prognosis for CRC. Gene expression profiles and clinical information of CRC patients were collected from six public cohorts, divided into training cohort (n = 565) and five independent validation cohorts (n = 572, 290, 90 177 and 68, respectively). Within 1534 immune genes, a 19 IRGPs signature consisting of 36 unique genes was constructed which was significantly associated with the survival. In the validation cohorts, the IRGPs signature significantly stratified patients into highvs low-risk groups in terms of prognosis across and within subpopulations with early stages disease and was prognostic in univariate and multivariate analyses. Several biological processes, including response to bacterium, were enriched among genes in the IRGPs signature. Macrophage M2 and mast cells were significantly higher in the high-risk risk group compared with the low-risk group. The IRGPs signature achieved a higher accuracy than commercialized multigene signatures for estimation of survival. When integrated with clinical factors such as sex and stage, the composite clinical and IRGPs signature showed improved prognostic accuracy relative to IRGPs signatures alone. In short, we developed a robust IRGPs signature for estimating prognosis in CRC, including early-stage disease, providing new insights into the identification of CRC patients with a high risk of mortality. ARTICLE HISTORY

Identification of a prognostic immune signature for cervical cancer to predict survival and response to immune checkpoint inhibitors

“…Tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) is an important variable relating to the progression of CC. 11,12 Additionally, several immune prognostic signatures have been reported to predict the prognosis of patients with cancer, such as lung cancer, 13 ovarian cancer, 14 colorectal cancer, 15 and hepatocellular carcinoma. 16 These studies indicate that IRGs or TIME can serve as promising biomarkers for estimating survival in corresponding cancer.…”

Development and validation of an immune-related gene pairs signature in lower-grade glioma

“…Similar to other studies, several immune cells distributed signi cantly differently in our research. For example, we found T cells CD8 and Macrophage M0 are signi cantly enriched in the high-risk group, Wu et al' s research [27] also have the same trend, though was not statistically signi cant. While the opposite view indicated T cells CD8 was signi cantly higher in the low-risk group [28].…”

“…There exists an inevitable deviation owing to technical biases across sequencing platforms and biological heterogeneity [23]. Thus, researchers have invented the conception of immune-related gene pairs, which can eliminate the disadvantages of data processing and is considered to be a robust prognostic indicator in some tumors [24][25][26][27][28][29].…”

Development of an immune-related gene pairs signature for predicting clinical outcome in lung adenocarcinoma

“…Immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) signature has been established in several cancers including colorectal cancer [11], liver cancer [12] and ovarian cancer [13], and shown well accurate prognosis prediction. So far, there is no research using IRGPs to establish a prognosis signature in LUAD.…”