Signature identification based on immunogenic cell death-related lncRNAs to predict the prognosis and immune activity of patients with endometrial carcinoma.

BACKGROUND

Endometrial carcinoma (EC) is one of the most prevalent gynecologic malignancies and requires further classification for treatment and prognosis. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and immunogenic cell death (ICD) play a critical role in tumor progression. Nevertheless, the role of lncRNAs in ICD in EC remains unclear. This study aimed to explore the role of ICD related-lncRNAs in EC via bioinformatics and establish a prognostic risk model based on the ICD-related lncRNAs. We also explored immune infiltration and immune cell function across prognostic groups and made treatment recommendations.

METHODS

A total of 552 EC samples and clinical data of 548 EC patients were extracted from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Xena, respectively. A prognostic-related feature and risk model was developed using the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO). Subtypes were classified with consensus cluster analysis and validated with t-Distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (tSNE). Kaplan-Meier analysis was conducted to assess differences in survival. Infiltration by immune cells was estimated by single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA), Tumor IMmune Estimation Resource (TIMER) algorithm. Quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was used to detect lncRNAs expression in clinical samples and cell lines. A series of studies was conducted in vitro and in vivo to examine the effects of knockdown or overexpression of lncRNAs on ICD.

RESULTS

In total, 16 ICD-related lncRNAs with prognostic values were identified. Using SCARNA9, FAM198B-AS1, FKBP14-AS1, FBXO30-DT, LINC01943, and AL161431.1 as risk model, their predictive accuracy and discrimination were assessed. We divided EC patients into high-risk and low-risk groups. The analysis showed that the risk model was an independent prognostic factor. The prognosis of the high- and low-risk groups was different, and the overall survival (OS) of the high-risk group was lower. The low-risk group had higher immune cell infiltration and immune scores. Consensus clustering analysis divided the samples into four subtypes, of which cluster 4 had higher immune cell infiltration and immune scores.

CONCLUSIONS

A prognostic signature composed of six ICD related-lncRNAs in EC was established, and a risk model based on this signature can be used to predict the prognosis of patients with EC.