Ubiquitination modification is closely related to cancer and participates in the regulation of tumor microenvironment. However, the role of ubiquitination modification in the immune response and prognosis of lung adenocarcinoma has not been elucidated. This study aims to establish a disease classification associated with ubiquitination and reveal the landscape of intratumor microbes in patients with lung adenocarcinoma for the first time. A total of 1314 patients with lung adenocarcinoma in the GEO and TCGA databases were included in our study. We constructed a ubiquitination scoring model using WGCNA and constructed ubiquitination subtypes using unsupervised clustering, analyzed the clinical characteristics, immune characteristics, and intratumor microbes characteristics, and screened out the relevant gene signatures, which were verified by RT-qPCR in human cancer cells. The results showed that the high ubiquitination subtype had poor prognosis, low degree of immune infiltration, high index of tumor stemness, and poor effect of immunotherapy. The subtypes with lower ubiquitination scores have better prognosis, higher tumor microenvironment score and better immunotherapy effect. The C2 subtype has high level of immune infiltration, lower intratumor microbes diversity and abundance, and good prognosis. The C3 subtype has low level of immune infiltration, higher intratumor microbes diversity and abundance, and poor prognosis. The C1 subtype has characteristics between C2 and C3. In summary, this paper constructs a scoring system and several subtypes based on ubiquitination genes, and analyzed the characteristics, which can help provide new methods for clinical treatment.
Keywords: Immune microenvironment; Immunotherapy; Lung adenocarcinoma; Microorganisms; Prognosis; Ubiquitination.
Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Inc.