Clinical and Translational Research
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2024. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Feb 24, 2024; 15(2): 243-270
Published online Feb 24, 2024. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v15.i2.243
Identification of immune cell-related prognostic genes characterized by a distinct microenvironment in hepatocellular carcinoma
Meng-Ting Li, Kai-Feng Zheng, Yi-Er Qiu
Meng-Ting Li, Kai-Feng Zheng, Yi-Er Qiu, Department of Gastroenterology, The Affiliated People's Hospital of Ningbo University, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China
Author contributions: Li MT contributed to writing-original draft; Zheng KF contributed to writing-reviewing and editing; Qiu YE contributed to supervision.
Institutional review board statement: Our research was conducted based on public datasets, and no human subjects were involved in this research. Thus, there is no need to obtain approval by the institutional review board.
Informed consent statement: Our research was conducted based on public datasets, and no human subjects were involved in this research. Thus, there is no need to obtain informed consent.
Conflict-of-interest statement: All the authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data sharing statement: The data sets supporting the results of this article are all included in the article.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Meng-Ting Li, MD, PhD, Doctor, Department of Gastroenterology, The Affiliated People's Hospital of Ningbo University, No. 251 Baizhang East Road, Ningbo 315000, Zhejiang Province, China. limengting1992@foxmail.com
Received: October 18, 2023
Peer-review started: October 18, 2023
First decision: November 17, 2023
Revised: December 4, 2023
Accepted: January 11, 2024
Article in press: January 11, 2024
Published online: February 24, 2024
ARTICLE HIGHLIGHTS
Research background

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a common cancer that has the highest prevalence among liver cancer subtypes. The overall five-year survival rate of HCC is less than 5%. Thus, it is necessary to explore novel prognostic biomarkers and risk models for this malignancy.

Research motivation

To investigate the relationship between immune cells and HCC, and establish a prognostic model.

Research objectives

To develop a novel immune cell-related prognostic model of HCC and depict the basic profile of the immune response in HCC.

Research methods

Clinical information and gene expression data of HCC were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) datasets. TCGA and ICGC datasets were used for screening prognostic genes along with developing and validating a seven-gene prognostic survival model by weighted gene coexpression network analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator regression with Cox regression. Based on the prognostic genes identified, we further performed the relative analysis of tumor mutation burden, tumor microenvironment cell infiltration, immune checkpoints, immune therapy, and functional pathways.

Research results

Seven prognostic genes were identified for signature construction, which showed a good performance for survival prediction. A significant difference was observed in stromal score, immune score, and estimate score between he high-risk and low-risk groups stratified based on the risk score derived from the seven-gene prognostic model.. Several immune checkpoints were found to be associated with the seven prognostic genes and risk score. Targeting CTLA4 and PD1 receptors and potential chemotherapy drugs might be helpful for specific HCC therapies. Cell cycle regulation and metabolism of some amino acids were also identified as special signaling pathways.

Research conclusions

A novel seven-gene (CYTH3, ENG, HTRA3, PDZD4, SAMD14, PGF, and PLN) prognostic model was successfully established and showed high predictive efficiency. The basic profile of the immune response in HCC might be worthy of clinical application.

Research perspectives

The novel seven-gene immune-cell related prognostic model might be useful for revealing the basic profile of immune response in HCC. Potential chemotherapy drugs could provide useful insights into the potential clinical treatment of HCC.