Identification and validation of obesity related genes signature based on microenvironment phenotypes in prostate adenocarcinoma.

BACKGROUND: The role of obesity related genes (ORGs) in the immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) treatment of prostate adenocarcinoma (PRAD) has not yet been proved by research.

METHODS: We comprehensively evaluated the ORGs patterns in PRAD based on tumor microenvironment (TME) phenotypes and immunotherapy efficacies. Then we constructed a ORGs risk score for prognosis and a ORGs signature for accurate prediction of TME phenotype and immunotherapy efficacy in order to evaluate individual patients.

RESULTS: Two distinct ORGs patterns were generated. The two ORGs patterns were consistent with inflammatory and non-inflammatory TME phenotypes. ORGs patterns had an important role for predicting immunotherapy efficacies. Next, we constructed a ORGs risk score for predicting each patient's prognosis with high performance in TCGA-PRAD. The ORGs risk score could be well verified in the external cohorts including GSE70769 and GSE21034. Then, we developed a ORGs signature and found it was significantly positively correlated with tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes in TCGA-PRAD. We found that each patient in the high-risk ORGs signature group represented a non-inflamed TME phenotype on the single cell level. The patients with high ORGs signature had more sensitivity to immunotherapy. And those ORGs were verified.

CONCLUSIONS: ORGs pattern depicts different TME phenotypes in PRAD. The ORGs risk score and ORGs signature have an important role for predicting prognosis and immunotherapy efficacies.