Breast cancer (BRCA) has become the highest incidence of cancer due to its heterogeneity. To predict the prognosis of BRCA patients, sensitive biomarkers deserve intensive investigation. Herein, we explored the role of N 6-methyladenosine-related long non-coding RNAs (m6A-related lncRNAs) as prognostic biomarkers in BRCA patients acquired from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA; n = 1,089) dataset and RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) data (n = 196). Pearson's correlation analysis, and univariate and multivariate Cox regression were performed to select m6A-related lncRNAs associated with prognosis. Twelve lncRNAs were identified to construct an m6A-related lncRNA prognostic signature (m6A-LPS) in TCGA training (n = 545) and validation (n = 544) cohorts. Based on the 12 lncRNAs, risk scores were calculated. Then, patients were classified into low- and high-risk groups according to the median value of risk scores. Distinct immune cell infiltration was observed between the two groups. Patients with low-risk score had higher immune score and upregulated expressions of four immune-oncology targets (CTLA4, PDCD1, CD274, and CD19) than patients with high-risk score. On the contrary, the high-risk group was more correlated with overall gene mutations, Wnt/β-catenin signaling, and JAK-STAT signaling pathways. In addition, the stratification analysis verified the ability of m6A-LPS to predict prognosis. Moreover, a nomogram (based on risk score, age, gender, stage, PAM50, T, M, and N stage) was established to evaluate the overall survival (OS) of BRCA patients. Thus, m6A-LPS could serve as a sensitive biomarker in predicting the prognosis of BRCA patients and could exert positive influence in personalized immunotherapy.
Keywords: N6-methyladenosine; breast cancer; immune infiltrates; immune-oncology targets; prognosis.
Copyright © 2021 Zhang, Shen, Cai, Yu, Yang, Wu, Zhu and Liu.