An Immune Panel Signature Predicts Prognosis of Lung Adenocarcinoma Patients and Correlates With Immune Microenvironment

Yuan Zhou; Lu Tang; Yuqiao Chen; Youyu Zhang; Wei Zhuang

doi:10.3389/fcell.2021.797984

An Immune Panel Signature Predicts Prognosis of Lung Adenocarcinoma Patients and Correlates With Immune Microenvironment

Front Cell Dev Biol. 2021 Dec 21:9:797984. doi: 10.3389/fcell.2021.797984. eCollection 2021.

Authors

Yuan Zhou^{1

2}, Lu Tang³, Yuqiao Chen^{1

2}, Youyu Zhang^{1

2}, Wei Zhuang^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Thoracic Surgery, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China.
² National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University,Changsha, China.
³ Department of Anesthesiology, Xiangya Hospital of Central South University, Changsha, China.

Abstract

Background: Lung cancer, especially lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) with high incidence, seriously endangers human life. The immune microenvironment is one of the malignant foundations of LUAD, but its impact at the molecular level is incompletely understood. Method: A total of 34 LUAD samples from Xiangya Hospital were collected for immune oncology (IO) profiling. Univariate Cox analysis was performed to profile prognostic immune genes based on our immune panel sequencing data. The least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) algorithm was applied to construct a risk signature. The cut-off threshold of risk score was determined using X-tile software. Kaplan-Meier survival curves and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were employed to examine the performance of this risk signature for predicting prognosis. The immune infiltration was estimated using a single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) algorithm. Result: Thirty-seven immune genes were profiled to be significantly correlated with the progression-free survival (PFS) in our cohort. Among them, BST2, KRT7, LAMP3, MPO, S100A8, and TRIM29 were selected to construct a risk signature. Patients with a higher risk score had a significantly shorter PFS (p = 0.007). Time-dependent ROC curves indicated that our risk signature had a robust performance in accurately predicting survival. Specifically, the 6-, 12-, and 18-month area under curve (AUC) was 0.800, 0.932, and 0.912, respectively. Furthermore, the risk signature was positively related to N stage, tumor stage, and tumor malignancy. These results were validated using two external cohorts. Finally, the risk signature was significantly and uniquely correlated with abundance of neutrophil. Conclusion: Our study revealed an immune panel-based signature that could predict the prognosis of LUAD patients and was associated with the infiltration of neutrophils.

Keywords: gene signature; immune panel sequencing; lung adenocarcinoma; metastasis; progression-free survival.