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Research Paper|Volume 13, Issue 3|pp 3501—3517

A novel Foxp3-related immune prognostic signature for glioblastoma multiforme based on immunogenomic profiling

Xiao-Yu Guo1, Guan-Hua Zhang1,2, Zhen-Ning Wang1, Hao Duan1, Tian Xie1, Lun Liang1, Rui Cui1, Hong-Rong Hu1, Yi Wu3, Jia-jun Dong3, Zhen-Qiang He1, Yong-Gao Mou1
  • 1Department of Neurosurgery/Neuro-oncology, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, Collaborative Innovation Center for Cancer Medicine, Guangzhou 510000, China
  • 2Department of Cerebrovascular Surgery, The Third Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510000, China
  • 3Department of Neurosurgery, Jiangmen Central Hospital, Jiangmen 529030, China
* Equal contribution
Received: June 8, 2020Accepted: October 31, 2020Published: January 10, 2021
https://doi.org/10.18632/aging.202282

Copyright: © 2021 Guo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Abstract

Foxp3+ regulatory T cells (Treg) play an important part in the glioma immunosuppressive microenvironment. This study analyzed the effect of Foxsp3 on the immune microenvironment and constructed a Foxp3-related immune prognostic signature (IPS)for predicting prognosis in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM). Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining for Foxp3 was performed in 72 high-grade glioma specimens. RNA-seq data from 152 GBM samples were obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas database (TCGA) and divided into two groups, Foxp3 High (Foxp3_H) and Foxp3 Low (Foxp3_L), based on Foxp3 expression. We systematically analyzed the influence of Foxp3 on the immune microenvironment. Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) Cox analysis was conducted for immune-related genes that were differentially expressed between Foxp3_H and Foxp3_L GBM patients. We found a differential expression of Foxp3 in high-grade glioma tissues. The presence of Foxp3 was significantly associated with poor OS. From the four-gene IPS developed, GBM patients were stratified into low-risk and high-risk groups in both the training set and validation sets. Furthermore, we developed a novel nomogram to evaluate the overall survival in GBM patients. This study offers innovative insights into the GBM immune microenvironment and these findings contribute to individualized treatment and improvement in the prognosis for GBM patients.