Heat shock factor 5 correlated with immune infiltration serves as a prognostic biomarker in lung adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the predominant subtype of lung cancer with a relatively poor prognosis. The dramatic improvements of new immunotherapy strategies have shown promising results in lung cancer patients. This study aimed to elucidate the functions of immune-associated genes in LUAD prognosis and pathogenesis by analyzing public databases. We obtained expression profiles of LUAD patients from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database and applied the ESTIMATE algorithm to calculate immune scores and stromal scores. A series of microenvironment-related genes with prognostic value was then identified. Of note, heat shock factor 5 (HSF5) was found to be decreased in LUAD patients and positively correlated with overall survival, which was further confirmed in the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database. Moreover, Gene Ontology (GO) analysis based on the correlated genes of HSF5 demonstrated that HSF5 expression was significantly associated with the immune response and inflammatory activities. Based on the Tumor IMmune Estimation Resource (TIMER) and Gene Expression Profiling Interactive Analysis (GEPIA) datasets, HSF5 expression showed strong correlations with various immune cell infiltration and diverse immune marker sets. These findings suggest that HSF5 can be used as a promising biomarker for determining prognosis and immune infiltration in LUAD patients.

Integrative analysis and experiments to explore angiogenesis regulators correlated with poor prognosis, immune infiltration and cancer progression in lung adenocarcinoma

“…The tumor microenvironment (TME) is a complex network that comprises various cell types, cytokines and other extracellular components and plays a fundamental role in cancer recognition and treatment [ 18 ]. Over the past decade, immunotherapy targeting specific tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIS) has been proven to improve the therapy response and clinical outcome of patients with LUAD [ 19 ].…”

Targeting HSF1 for cancer treatment: mechanisms and inhibitor development

“…HSF5 is not a well-known factor among the HSF family members. However, in lung adenocarcinoma, it has been shown that HSF5 plays a regulatory role in immune infiltration, suggesting that this isoform may serve as a potential immunotherapy target 28 . HSFX and HSFY are located on the X chromosome and Y chromosome, respectively.…”

More Than Meets the Eye: Revisiting the Roles of Heat Shock Factor 4 in Health and Diseases

“…In addition to its role in spermatogenesis [ 24 , 25 , 26 ], HSF5 was found to be downregulated in lung adenocarcinoma patients within the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) cohort. Its expression was also found to positively correlate with patients’ overall survival, inflammatory responses, and immune cell infiltration [ 27 ]. In contrast, HSFY has been reported to be involved in germ cell development, whereby the deletion of HSFY results in male infertility [ 28 , 29 ].…”