Esophageal Cancer Associated Immune Genes as Biomarkers for Predicting Outcome in Upper Gastrointestinal Tumors

Abstract

Esophageal cancer (EC) is the seventh most common tumor in the world, ranking the sixth leading cause of cancer death, with a 5-year survival rate of 15-25%. Therefore, reliable prognostic biomarkers are needed to effectively predict the prognosis of EC. In this study, the gene profile information of the EC cohort served as a training set, which was derived from TCGA and Immport databases. GO and KEGG enrichment analysis was performed on the differential genes in normal and tumor groups of EC. The immune genes in differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were further obtained for univariate and multivariate Cox and Lasso regression analysis, and 6 independent immune genes (S100A3, STC2, HSPA6, CCL25, GPER1, and OSM) associated with prognosis were obtained to establish an immune risk score signature (IRSS). The signature was validated using head and neck cancers (HNSC) and gastric cancer (GC)in upper gastrointestinal malignancies as validation sets. The Kaplan-Meier results showed that the prognosis of the high-risk group was significantly favorable than that of the low-risk group in both the training set (P < 0.001; HR = 3.68, 95% CI = 2.14−6.35) and the validation set (P = 0.010; HR = 1.43, 95% CI = 1.09−1.88). A nomogram combining multiple clinical information and IRSS was more effective than a single independent prognostic factor in predicting outcome. This study explored the potential link between immunity and EC, and established and validated prognostic biomarkers that can effectively predict the prognosis of EC, HNSC and GC based on six immune genes.

STC2 activates PRMT5 to induce radioresistance through DNA damage repair and ferroptosis pathways in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

“…STC2 was also identified as an interacting partner of the plasma-protein histidine-rich glycoprotein, regulating glioma growth through the modulation of antitumor immunity [ 32 ]. Regarding ESCC, some bioinformatic studies strongly suggested that STC2 was a potential prognostic biomarker without further validation [ [33] , [34] , [35] ]. One study explored and validated that STC2 showed higher expression in ESCC tissues than in corresponding normal tissues.…”

Identification of SNHG16 and Its Derived Tumor Immune Gene Signatures for Predicting Prognosis and Efficacy of Immunotherapy in Bladder Cancer

“…For example, Dai et al, developed an eleven-gene prognostic model that showed good performance for prognosis prediction [32]. Zhu et al, reported a six-gene signature for predicting OS [33]. Although there is growing evidence that tumor immune phenotypes are signi cantly associated with prognosis and treatment response in various types of cancer, few studies have focused on the genetic signature of key genes of the tumor immune microenvironment based on immune-associated lncRNAs.…”

Long Noncoding RNA RP11-732M18.3 Promotes Glioma Angiogenesis by Upregulating VEGFA

“…A multivariate Cox regression analysis demonstrated that VEGFA, age, and grade were still the significant increasing risk factor (Figure 3F). Nomograms are widely used for prognostic assessment of tumors, which simplify statistical prediction models to single numerical estimates of event probabilities tailored to individual patient profiles (23). A 1-year nomogram indicated that there are three components of this nomogram: VEGFA, age, and grade (Figure 3G).…”