Construction and validation of a TRP-related long noncoding RNA signature for prognosis prediction in breast cancer patients

Background: Breast cancer (BC) is the most diagnosed malignancy in women around the word. Accumulating evidence suggest that transient receptor potential (TRP) channels play significant role in tumor progression and immune cell infiltration. Nevertheless, the relationship between TRP channels and tumor immune microenvironment of BC is still unclear. Hence, we conducted the study to investigate the correlation between TRP-associated lncRNAs and the prognosis of breast carcinoma. Method: 33 TRP-associated genes were selected from a review published by Amrita Samanta et al. and the TRP-related lncRNAs were identified by the Pearson analysis. Based on the sum of the expression levels of 12 lncRNAs, provided by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), a TRP-associated-lncRNA signature was established by use of Cox regression analysis. According to the median value of risk score in training set, BC patients were separated into high- and low-risk groups. Subsequently, the functional enrichment analysis was conducted in the differential expression genes (DEGs) between different risk groups. The ESTIMATE Score was calculated by ESTIMATE and the immune cell infiltration was evaluated by ssGSEA. Finally, the immune checkpoint genes expression levels, microsatellite instable (MSI) and the immunophenoscore (IPS) were further assessed.Results: The high-risk groups exhibited lower survival rates while the low-risk groups shown higher survival rates. The DEGs between different risk groups were highly enriched in immune cell activation and immunoregulation. Besides, the ESTIMATE scores of patients in low-risk groups were higher than those in high-risk groups. The infiltration levels of several immune cells were remarkably elevated in low-risk groups and various immune signatures were activated with the decreased risk score. Eventually, the TRP-associated lncRNAs signature was confirmed with highly potential ability to evaluate the immunotherapy response in breast carcinoma patients. Conclusion: The outcomes of current study indicated that the 12-TRP-associate-lncRNA risk model was an independent prognostic risk factor for BC patients. This risk model could be closely related to the tumor immune microenvironment in BC. Our findings will provide a new insight for future immunotherapy for BC treatment.