Microenvironment analysis of prognosis and molecular signature of immune-related genes in lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

There is growing evidence on the clinical significance of tumor microenvironment (TME) cells in predicting prognosis and therapeutic effects. However, cell interactions in tumor microenvironments have not been thoroughly studied or systematically analyzed so far. In this study, 22 immune cell components in the lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) TME were analyzed using gene expression profile from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO). The TME-based molecular subtypes of LUAD were defined to evaluate further the relationship between molecular subtypes, prognosis, and clinical characteristics. A TME risk score model was constructed by using the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of molecular subtypes. The relationship between the TME score and clinical characteristics and genomic mutations was compared to identify the genes that have significant associations with the TME. The comprehensive analysis of the TME characteristics may be helpful in revealing the response of LUAD patients to immunotherapy, providing a new strategy for immunotherapy.