A novel m7G-related signature to predict prognosis and immune status in patients with hepatocellular carcinoma

Abstract

Background 7-methylguanosine (m7G) is one of the most common RNA methylation modification, which is closely related to the development of many types of tumors. However, the role of m7G-related genes in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains unclear. We wanted to investigate the influence of m7G-related genes on the prognosis of HCC and establish a novel model to assess the potential prognostic application in HCC. Methods Firstly, we screened differentially expressed m7G-related genes in HCC using The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database. Then, a novel risk model according to the m7G-related genes for prognosis was built via univariate and multivariate regression. Furthermore, its reliability was verified by Kaplan-Meier method, ROC analysis, PCA, and t-SNE analyses. Functional enrichment, immune status, tumor mutation burden, immune checkpoints, patients response to chemotherapeutics were analyzed among the different risk groups. Eventually, the novel m7G-related prognostic signature was validated in external ICGC and human protein atlas database. Results 27 differentially expressed m7G-related genes were screened, and EIF4E, GEMIN5, WDR4, NCBP2, NUDT5 were used to build a novel prognostic model. Individuals in the high risk category possessed remarkable poorer overall survival than their counterparts. We demonstrated that m7G-related risk model could be utilized as an independent prognostic marker for HCC patients and showed a good concordance with the prediction. We discovered that clinicopathological characteristics, immune cell infiltrations, immune function and tumor microenvironment differed dramatically between two risk groups. Additionally, high risk patients may possess a better response to immunotherapy and chemotherapeutic drug therapy. Finally, ICGC and immunohistochemical images confirmed our results. Conclusions This study furnished a novel forecast signature for predicting the prognosis of HCC patients and built a considerable foundation for future researches of the relationships between m7G-related genes and immunity in HCC.