Identification of a Lipid Metabolism-Associated Gene Signature Predicting Survival in Breast Cancer

Mingkai Gong,1 Xiangping Liu,2 Wu Yang,3 Hongming Song,1 Xian Zhao,1 Xiancheng Ai,1 Shuo Wang,1 Haibo Wang1 1Center of Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Disease, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266003, People’s Republic of China; 2Medical Research Center, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266003, People’s Republic of China; 3Department of International Medicine, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266003, People’s Republic of ChinaCorrespondence: Haibo WangCenter of Diagnosis and Treatment of Breast Disease, The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University, Qingdao, 266003, People’s Republic of ChinaEmail hbwang66@126.comBackground: Cancer metabolism and specifically lipid metabolism play an important role in breast cancer (BC) progression and metastasis. However, the role of lipid metabolism-associated genes (LMGs) in the prognosis of breast cancer remains unknown.Methods: The expression profiles and clinical follow-up information of 1053 BC were downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and metabolic genes were downloaded from the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) dataset. Univariate Cox regression and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analyses were performed on the differentially expressed metabolism-related genes. Then, the formula of the metabolism-related risk model was composed, and the risk score of each patient was calculated. The breast cancer patients were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups with a cutoff of the median expression value of the risk score, and the prognostic analysis was also used to analyze the survival time between these two groups. Finally, we analyzed the expression, interaction and correlation among the lipid metabolism-associated genes risk model.Results: The results from the prognostic analysis indicated that the survival was significantly poorer in the high-risk group than in the low-risk group in TCGA, and single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) shows it is plausible that lipid metabolism is highly correlated with tumor immunity.Conclusion: Lipid metabolism-associated genes may become a new prognostic indicator predicting the survival of BC patients. The prognostic genes (n = 16) may help provide new strategies for tumor therapy.Keywords: bioinformatics, lipid metabolism-associated genes, breast cancer, lipid metabolism, TCGA