Identification and validation of a hypoxia-related prognostic and immune microenvironment signature in bladder cancer

Cancer Cell International

Xiaofeng Zhao¹  Xianchao Sun²  Lin Ye²  Liang Jin²  Wangli Mei²  Ming Luo²  Tingshuai Zhai²  Bihui Zhang²  Jiaxin Zhang²  Xudong Yao²  Zhen Zhou²  Xiang Liu³  Ying Zhang⁴  Jinyou Wang⁴ 

[1]Department of Urology, Karamay Central Hospital, 834000, Karamay, Xinjiang, China

[2]Department of Urology, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, 200072, Shanghai, China

[3]Department of Urology, Shanghai Tenth People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, 200072, Shanghai, China

[4]Department of Urology, Shanghai Putuo District People’s Hospital, Tongji University School of Medicine, 200060, Shanghai, China

[5]Department of Urology, The Second Affiliated Hospital of Anhui Medical University, 230032, Hefei, Anhui, China

关键词: Bladder cancer;    Hypoxia;    Prognostic;    Immune microenvironment;   

DOI  :  10.1186/s12935-021-01954-4

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundBladder cancer is the leading causes of cancer-associated mortality and seriously affects population health. Hypoxia plays a key role in tumor development and immune escape, which contributes to malignant behaviors.MethodsIn this study, we analyzed the RNA-seq and clinical information of bladder cancer patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. To investigate the hypoxia-related prognostic and immune microenvironment in bladder cancer, we constructed a hypoxia-related risk model for overall survival (OS). The RNA-seq and clinical data of bladder cancer patients from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database were used as validation sets.ResultsThe hypoxia-related risk signature was significantly correlated with clinical outcomes and could independently predict OS outcomes. Furthermore, the hypoxia-related risk signature could effectively reflected the levels of immune cell type fractions and the expression of critical immune checkpoint genes were higher in the high-risk group compared to the low-risk group. We also validated the expression levels of the prognostic genes in bladder cancer and paracancerous tissue samples through qRT-PCR analysis.ConclusionWe established a 7 hypoxia-related gene (HRG) signature that can be used as an independent clinical predictor and provided a potential mechanism in bladder cancer immunotherapy.

【 授权许可】

CC BY