A novel Chemokine-related LncRNA signature predicts the prognosis and immunotherapy response in lung adenocarcinoma patients

Background: Chemokines and their receptors are widely reported to be closely associated with cancer progression, especially in the immune microenvironment. However, studies on chemokine-related lncRNAs (CRLs) in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) have not been reported. This study aimed to construct a prognostic model based on CRL signature to explore their relationship with prognosis and immune infiltration in LUAD. Samples and methods: We first obtained RNA-seq data and clinical information from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, then identified prognostic CRLs by co-expression analysis and univariate Cox analysis, and constructed a prognostic model based on CRLs to predict the prognosis of LUAD patients using multifactorial Cox analysis and the Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) algorithm. Kaplan-Meier (K-M) survival curve analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis were used to assess the prognostic ability of the model. Finally, we also explored the relationship of the risk model with immune checkpoint gene expression, tumor mutation burden, immunotherapy scores, and drug sensitivity. Results We constructed a risk model based on seven CRLs (AL391261.1, AC034223.2, SH3BP5-AS1, LY86-AS1, AC104971.3, LINC01843, AL157388.1) that were significantly associated with prognosis. Patients with LUAD were divided into high-risk and low-risk groups, using the median value of the risk score as the cutoff. K-M survival analysis showed that the higher the risk score, the worse the prognosis. the area under the ROC curve (AUC) was 0.796, and multi-factor Cox analysis showed that the risk score was an independent risk factor affecting the prognosis of LUAD. In addition, our risk model played a key role in predicting immune checkpoint gene expression, tumor mutation burden, immunotherapy score, and drug sensitivity in LUAD patients. Conclusion We have identified a new CRL signature that has clinical value in predicting the prognosis of LUAD patients and provides a theoretical basis for the development of immunotherapy regimens for LUAD.