A Seven-Immune-Related-LncRNA Signature To Predict Prognosis And Immune Infiltration Of Bladder Cancer

BACKROUND: Bladder cancer(BLCA)is a heterogenous malignancy and patients exhibit different molecular subtypes and prognosis.Immunotherapy has optimized the treatment of BLCA but displays diverse responses among patients which may result from the heterogeneity of tumor immune microenvironment.Evidence shows that long non-coding RNA(lncRNA)can regulate tumorigenesis and progression and participate in cancer immunity in multi-dimensions and multi-stages,and because of their prognostic value,lncRNA may function as a novel biomarker to potentially predict prognosis and response to immunotherapy.OBJECTIVE: Identifying an immune-related-lncRNA signature to predict prognosis and immunotherapy effects in BLCA.METHODS: Using transcriptome expression profiles and clinical data of 396 BLCA patients from TCGA database,we performed correlation analysis between immune-related genes and lncRNAs to screen immune-related-lncRNAs.Then,we conducted univariable and multivariable Cox proportional hazard regression analysis and LASSO method to construct a prognostic immune-related-lncRNA signature.Finally,we investigated the correlation between the signature and the immunological features of patients.RESULTS: We identified a seven-immune-related-lncRNA signature and stratified patients into low-and high-risk groups.Kaplan-Meier survival analysis showed that low-risk group had favorable prognosis in training and validation sets(P < 0.001).The signature was an independent risk factor and exhibited superior predictive performance over certain clinical features by Receiver Operating Characteristic curves(P < 0.05,AUC > 0.7).The signature was significantly correlated with tumor-infiltrating immune cells and immune checkpoints.Gene sets enrichment analysis showed that low-and high-risk group patients had differential immunological features.CONCLUSIONS: The signature could better predict prognosis and immune infiltration and it might provide tailored immunotherapy to BLCA patients.A cohort or clinical studies are encouraged to prove our findings.