Correlative Study on the Relationship between the Expression of m6a-Related Genes and the Prognosis and Immunotherapy of Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Abstract

Background: Soft tissue sarcomas (STS) are rare malignancies arising from mesenchymal tissue and interlacing ectodermal nerve tissue. Immunotherapy plays an important role in the prognosis and survival of STS patients. However, there is insufficient evidence to confirm the prognostic value of m6A-related genes and to evaluate the efficacy of immunotherapy for STS.

Methods: We analyzed 23 m6A regulators from STS samples using R software and defined the modification patterns for three STS m6A regulators. Then, we constructed the m6A scores and divided the samples into high and low subgroups. Finally, we used data from the GEO database to verify the results.

Results: We found that the m6A clusters differed in the overall survival (OS), progression-free survival (PFS), and immune infiltration rate. Additionally, the m6A score was positively correlated with the contents of activated B cells, activated dendritic cells, CD56 bright natural killer cells, helper T cells, and regulatory T cells. The group with a higher m6A score also presented higher OS and PFS rates. Regarding immunotherapy, STS patients with a high m6A score presented better results. Consistently, we found similar results in another dataset with patients that received anti-PD-1/PD-L1 therapy.

Conclusion: Our current results indicated that the m6A score can be used to assess the survival rate of STS patients and guide immunotherapy and predict its effects. The analysis of different m6A patterns of STS samples contributed to the understanding of the diversity and complexity of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and provided new ideas for the clinical development of personalized immunotherapy and prediction of the prognosis of STS patients.