Identification of lncRNAs and immune-related prognostic genes as thyroid cancer microenvironment biomarkers

Abstract Although thyroid cancer is a frequent clinical tumor, it mostly affects young individuals, with an average age of around 40 years old, in contrast to the features of general cancer in the elderly. The outcomes of patients with undifferentiated THCA are still quite bad, despite the fact that full surgical resection and radiation have greatly increased the survival rate of patients with THCA. Therefore, improved patient prognostic interventions may be made by the discovery of the immune-related prognostic gene and long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) biomarker connected to the thyroid cancer microenvironment. The research obtained mRNA and lncRNA data from the TCGA database ( https://portal.gdc.cancer.gov ) for THCA patients, and it downloaded IRGs data from Import Shared Data ( https://www.Immport.org ). Then, a weighted gene co-expression network was constructed in order to identify the main modules connected to THCA. To determine the prognosis of THCA, immune-related long non-coding RNA (IR-lncRNA) and 11 mRNA classifiers were produced after univariate Cox regression analysis of all IRGs in the core module. Furthermore, the sample was split into two groups: high-risk and low-risk groups based on the classifier's risk score calculation. Through the use of the ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms in comparison to the two groups, we investigated more closely at the THCA samples' tumor microenvironment. Finally, we discovered three small molecules that may be useful therapeutically treating THCA patients with high risk. And our findings indicate IRG and IR-lncRNA-based classifiers may serve as trustworthy prognostic indicators for THCA survival.