Purpose
Emerging evidence demonstrates the vital role of aging and long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) in breast cancer (BC) progression. Our study intended to develop a prognostic risk model based on aging-related lncRNAs (AG-lncs) to foresee BC patients’ outcomes.
Patients and Methods
307 aging-related genes (AGs) were sequenced from the TCGA project. Then, 697 AG-lncs were identified by the co-expression analysis with AGs. Using multivariate and univariate Cox regression analysis, and LASSO, 6 AG-lncs, including
al136531.1, mapt-as1, al451085.2, otud6b-as1, tnfrsf14-as1
, and
linc01871
, were validated to compute the risk score and establish a risk signature. Expression levels of
al136531.1, mapt-as1, al451085.2, tnfrsf14-as1
, and
linc01871
were higher in low-risk BC patients, whereas
otud6b-as1
expression was higher in high-risk BC patients. In the training and testing set, high-risk patients performed shorter PFI, OS, and DFS than low-risk patients.
Results
Our risk signature had the highest concordance index among other established prognostic signatures and displayed ideal predictive ability for 1-, 3- and 5-year patient OS in the nomogram. Additionally, BC patients with different risk score levels showed different immune statuses and responses to immunotherapy via GSEA, ssGSEA, ESTIMATE algorithm, and TIDE algorithm analysis. Of note, the qRT-PCR analysis validated that these 6 AG-lncs expressed quite differentially in BC tissues at various clinical stages.
Conclusion
The risk signature of 6 AG-lncs might offer a novel prognostic biomarker and promisingly enhance BC immunotherapy’s effectiveness.