135P - The promising key genes associated with tumour microenvironment and prognosis of hepatocellular carcinoma

Background

Despite significant advances in multimodality treatments, hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains one of the common malignant tumors. Tumor microenvironments play an important role in progress of HCC. The study aimed to identify potential key genes associated with tumor microenvironments and prognosis of HCC.

Methods

The infiltration level of immune cells and stromal cells were calculated and quantified based on the ESTIMATE algorithm. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between high and low groups according to immune or stromal scores were screened using the gene expression profile of HCC pateitns in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and were further linked to prognosis of HCC. These genes were validated in four independent HCC cohorts. Survival-related key genes were identified by LASSO Cox regression model.

Results

HCC patients with high immune/stromal score had better survival benefits than patients with low score. A total of 899 DEGs were identified and involved in immune responses and extracellular matrices, 147 of which were associated with overall survival. Subsequently, 52 of 147 survival-related DEGs were valided in additional cohorts. Finally, 10 key genes were selected (STSL2, TMC5, DOK5, RASGRP2, NLRC3, KLRB1, CD5L, CFHR3, ADH1C and UGT2B15) and used to construct a prognostic gene signature, presenting good performance in predicting overall survival.

Conclusions

This study extracted a list of genes associated with tumor microenvironments and the prognosis of HCC and would provide several valuable directions for the prognostic prediction and molecular targeted therapy of HCC in the future.

Clinical trial identification

Editorial acknowledgement

Legal entity responsible for the study

Xiujun Cai.

Funding

Has not received any funding.

Disclosure

All authors have declared no conflicts of interest.