An Immune-Related Gene Prognostic Index for Bladder Cancer

Abstract Background Despite the advances in immunotherapy for bladder cancer in recent years, the efficacy is unsatisfactory as expected. In this study, we have conducted a reliable immune-related gene prognostic index to predict immunotherapy efficacy for bladder cancer based on public databases. Methods Differential expression analysis on comparing the tumor and normal samples in the merged TCGA-BLCA & GTEx databases was applied, and the differential expressed immune-related genes were sent to Weighted gene coexpression network analysis. Multivariable Cox analysis of genes among the three most significant coexpression modules was used to develop an immune-related gene prognostic index, and the merged three GEO dataset was used as an independent validation cohort. Further, a model that combined the index with other clinicopathologic features was also verified independently. Results 11 genes were harvested to construct an immune-related gene prognostic index, both the index and clinicopathologic-index model were well verified in independent cohorts. Conclusions The immune-related gene prognostic index for bladder cancer was a reliable and useful marker to predict immunotherapy efficacy for bladder cancer.