Identification of an Immune-related Signature As a Prognostic Classifier for Patients with Early-stage Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Overview

Journal Transl Cancer Res

Specialty Oncology

Date 2024 Apr 15

PMID 38617526

Authors

Le Wang

Yulin Zhang

Hongmin Li

Jilin Peng

Changhui Gao

Qiuning Yu

Pei Gao

Ling Li

Kuisheng Chen

Fanglei Ye

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Background: Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is the most common type and accounts for 90% of all head and neck cancer cases. Despite advances in early diagnosis and treatment strategies-chemotherapy, surgical resection, and radiotherapy-5-year survival remains grim. For patients with early-stage HNSCC, accurately predicting clinical outcomes is challenging. Considering the pivotal role of the immune system in HNSCC, we developed a reliable immune-related gene signature (IRGS) and explored its predictive accuracy in patients with early-stage HNSCC.

Methods: We examined immune gene expression profiles and clinical information from 230 early-stage HNSCC specimens, including 100 cases from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), 49 cases from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO; GSE65858), and 81 cases from an independent clinical cohort. The prognostic signature was constructed using Kaplan-Meier analysis and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) Cox algorithm. We also explored the IRGS-related biological pathways and immune landscape using bioinformatics analysis.

Results: A nine-immune-gene signature was generated to significantly stratify patients into high and low-risk groups. High risk patients exhibited shorter survival time [hazard ratio (HR) =13.795, 95% confidence interval (CI): 3.275-58.109, P<0.001]. The signature demonstrated robust prognostic ability in the training and validation sets and could independently predict overall survival (OS) and relapse-free survival (RFS). Subsequently, the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve and C-index confirmed the signature's predictive accuracy compared to clinical parameters. Additionally, cases classified as low risk showed more immune cell infiltration than high-risk cases.

Conclusions: Our novel IRGS is a reliable and robust classifier for accurate patient stratification and prognostic evaluation. Future studies will attempt to affirm the signature's clinical application to early-stage HNSCC.

Citing Articles

Deciphering the prognostic potential of a necroptosis-related gene signature in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma: a bioinformatic analysis.

Wang S, Jiang J, Xing M, Su H Transl Cancer Res. 2025; 14(1):340-353.

PMID: 39974401 PMC: 11833364. DOI: 10.21037/tcr-24-743.

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