As one of the most common malignancies in the urinary system, bladder cancer (BC) occupies a high mortality and recurrence rate. BC carries an ominous prognosis. Thus, we aimed to identify a novel immune-related prognostic biomarker and therapeutic target for immunotherapy in the present study. We first constructed a co-expression network based on immune-related genes (IRGs). Two key modules showed high association with the clinical feature interested us most were further identified. Forty-five IRGs were screened out and regarded as hub genes in the co-expression network. We further constructed a protein-protein interaction (PPI) network, and five independent methods were used for hub gene identification. Three hub genes were identified in the present study. CD86 molecule (CD86) was screened out by performing overall survival (OS) analysis. Subsequent analyses by using some bioinformatics and experimental assays confirmed that CD86 was an immune-related prognostic biomarker, which might be a novel target for immunotherapy in BC. A small molecule drug named suloctidil was also identified, which showed potential for BC treatment.
Keywords: bladder cancer; immune cell infiltration; immune-related genes; prognosis; weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA).
Copyright © 2021 Yan, Du, Chen, Liu and Li.