Molecular Prognostication in Bladder Cancer

PRR11 is a prognostic biomarker and correlates with immune infiltrates in bladder urothelial carcinoma

Abnormal proline-rich protein 11 (PRR11) expression is associated with various tumors. However, there are few reports concerning PRR11 with prognostic risk, immune infiltration, or immunotherapy of bladder urothelial carcinoma (BLCA). This study is based on online databases, such as Oncomine, GEPIA, HPA, LinkedOmics, TIMER, ESTIMATE and TISIDB, and BLCA data downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus, we employed an array of bioinformatics methods to explore the potential oncogenic roles of PRR11, including analyzing the relationship between PRR11 and prognosis, tumor mutational burden (TMB), microsatellite instability, and immune cell infiltration in BLCA. The results depict that PRR11 is highly expressed in BLCA, and BLCA patients with higher PRR11 expression have worse outcomes. In addition, there was a significant correlation between PRR11 expression and TMB and tumor immune infiltration. These findings suggest that PRR11 can be used as a potential marker for BLCA patient assessment and risk stratification to improve clinical prognosis, and its potential regulatory mechanism in the BLCA tumor microenvironment and targeted therapy is worthy of further investigation.

OLFML2B Is a Robust Prognostic Biomarker in Bladder Cancer Through Genome-Wide Screening: A Study Based on Seven Cohorts

Background

Bladder cancer lacks useful and robust prognostic markers to stratify patients at risk. Our study is to identify a robust prognostic marker for bladder cancer.

Methods

The transcriptome and clinical data of bladder cancer were downloaded from multiple databases. We searched for genes with robust prognosis by Kaplan-Meier analysis of the whole genome. CIBERSORT and TIMER algorithm was used to calculate the degree of immune cell infiltration.

Results

We identified OLFML2B as a robust prognostic marker for bladder cancer in five cohorts. Kaplan-Meier analysis showed that patients with a high level of OLFML2B expression had a poor prognosis. The expression of OLFML2B increased with the increase of stage and grade. We found that patients with high expression of OLFML2B still had a poor prognosis in two small bladder cancer cohorts. OLFML2B also has the prognostic ability in ten other tumors, and the prognosis is poor in high expression. The correlation analysis between OLFML2B and immune cells showed that it was positively correlated with the degree of macrophage infiltration and highly co-expressed with tumor-associated macrophage markers. Finally, the Wound-healing assay and Colony formation assay results showed that the migration and proliferation ability of bladder cancer cell lines decreased after the knockdown of OLFML2B.

Conclusions

In summary, OLFML2B is a robust risk prognostic marker, and it can help patients with bladder cancer improve individualized treatment.

Characterization of the immune cell infiltration landscape in bladder cancer to aid immunotherapy

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is composed mainly of tumor cells, tumorinfiltrating immune cells, and matrix components. Recent clinical studies have indicated that tumor immune cell infiltration (ICI) is related to the sensitivity of immunotherapy and the prognosis of patients with bladder cancer (BC). Nevertheless, up to now, the landscape of immune infiltration in BC has not been clearly defined. Here we present two algorithms to reveal the landscape of ICI in 277 cases of BC. Two kinds of ICI patterns were established, and ICI scores were based on the analysis of the main components. In sub-types with high ICI scores, we found highly expressed immunecheckpoint and activated transforming growth factor b and WNT signal pathways. These might be the cause of poor prognosis. A low ICI score indicated a better prognosis. Our study showed that ICI scores in immunotherapy could be a valid biomarker for the prognosis of patients and a predictive indicator. The evaluation of ICI patterns of a larger cohort of samples would expand our cognition of TME, and the present study might guide the strategies of immunotherapy for patients with BC.

Construction of Protein-related Risk Score Model in Bladder Urothelial Carcinoma

Background

Though there are several prognostic models, there is no protein-related prognostic model. The aim of this study is to identify possible prognostic-related proteins in bladder urothelial carcinoma and to try to predict the prognosis of bladder urothelial carcinoma based on these proteins.

Methods

Profile data and corresponding clinical traits were obtained from The Cancer Proteome Atlas (TCPA) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) expression. Survival-associated protein in bladder urothelial carcinoma patients were estimated with Kaplan-Meier (KM) test and COX regression analysis. The potential molecular mechanisms and properties of these bladder urothelial carcinoma-specific proteins were also explored with the help of computational skills. The risk score model was validated in different clinical traits. Sankey diagram representation is for protein correlation. A new prognostic-related risk model based on proteins was developed by using multivariable COX analysis. Next, the alteration of the corresponding genes to the 6 prognostic-related proteins was analyzed. Finally, the relation between the corresponding genes and the immune infiltration was analyzed using the TIMER.

Results

Six proteins were identified to be associated with the prognosis of bladder urothelial carcinoma. A prognostic signature based on proteins (BECLIN, EGFR, PKCALPHA, SRC, ANNEXIN1, and AXL) performed moderately in prognostic predictions. The alteration of corresponding genes was in 31(24%) sequenced cases. ANXA1, AXL, and EGFR were positively related to CD8+ T cell.

Conclusion

Our results screened six proteins of clinical significance. The importance of a personalized protein signature model in the recognition, surveillance. The abnormal expression of six prognostic-related proteins may be caused by corresponding gene alteration. Furthermore, these proteins may affect survival via the immune infiltration.