Identification of Prognosis-Associated Immune Genes and Exploration of Immune Cell Infiltration in Colorectal Cancer

Abstract

Aim: To identify prognosis-related immune genes (PRIGs) and construct a prognosis model of colorectal cancer (CRC) patients for clinical use. Materials & methods: Expression profiles were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database and identified differentially expressed PRIGs of CRC. Results: A prognostic model was conducted based on nine PRIGs. The risk score, based on prognosis model, was an independent prognostic predictor. Five PRIGs and risk score were significantly associated with the clinical stage of CRC and five immune cells related to the risk score. Conclusion: The risk score was an independent prognostic biomarker for CRC patients. The research excavated immune genes that were associated with survival and that could be potential biomarkers for prognosis and treatment for CRC patients.

Keywords:

• colorectal cancer
• immune cell infiltration
• immune gene
• tumor microenvironment

Supplementary data

To view the supplementary data that accompany this paper please visit the journal website at: www.tandfonline.com/doi/suppl/10.2217/bmm-2020-0024

Author contributions

D-H Mi and Y-D Miao designed the study, XP Ma downloaded the data, Y-D Miao and Y Yang analyzed the data. Y-D Miao and J-T Wang drafted the article. All authors approved the paper.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the TCGA and GEO databases for the availability of the data.

Financial & competing interests disclosure

The authors have no relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript. This includes employment, consultancies, honoraria, stock ownership or options, expert testimony, grants or patents received or pending, or royalties.

No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.

Data sharing statement

The datasets of training group CRC for this study can be found in the TCGA database (https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov/). The database of validation group CRC for this study can be found in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/) database, including GSE39582, (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE39582), and GSE87211 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/query/acc.cgi?acc=GSE87211) datasets.