Development of an Immune-Related Risk Signature in Patients with Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma

Abstract

With recent advances in immunooncology and tumor microenvironment, the treatment landscape of bladder urothelial carcinoma has been changing dramatically. We aim to construct an immune gene-related signature which can predict BLCA patients’ overall survival. Transcriptomic data of BLCA patients was downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas database, and immune-related genes were downloaded from the Immunology Database and Analysis Portal database. Prognostic immune-related genes were identified. We then constructed and validated an immune gene-related signature. Tumor-related transcription factors were downloaded from the Cistrome database, and a network between them and prognostic immune-related genes was generated. Cox’s proportional hazards model and the Kaplan–Meier survival analysis were performed to assess our signature’s prognostic ability. Relationship between the signature and patients’ clinicopathologic features was then explored to validate its clinical value. We further downloaded concentration of six types of immune cells from the Tumor Immune Estimation Resource database to explore immune-related potential mechanisms of the signature.