Identification and Validation of a Novel Immune-Related Four-lncRNA Signature for Lung Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is a major subtype of lung cancer, the prognosis of patients with which is associated with both lncRNAs and cancer immunity. In this study, we collected gene expression data of 585 LUAD patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and 605 subjects from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. LUAD patients were divided into high and low immune-cell-infiltrated groups according to the single sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) algorithm to identify differentially expressed genes (DEGs). Based on the 49 immune-related DE lncRNAs, a four-lncRNA prognostic signature was constructed by applying least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression, univariate Cox regression, and stepwise multivariate Cox regression in sequence. Kaplan–Meier curve, ROC analysis, and the testing GEO datasets verified the effectiveness of the signature in predicting overall survival (OS). Univariate Cox regression and multivariate Cox regression suggested that the signature was an independent prognostic factor. The correlation analysis revealed that the infiltration immune cell subtypes were related to these lncRNAs.