Scientific Reports (Sep 2021)

N6-methylandenosine-related lncRNAs play an important role in the prognosis and immune microenvironment of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

  • YuHai Hu,
  • YiPing Chen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-97362-9
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 1
pp. 1 – 14

Abstract

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Abstract Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly aggressive, fatal tumor. N6-methylandenosine (m6A) methylation is the major epigenetic modification of RNA including lncRNAs. The roles of m6A-related lncRNAs in PDAC have not been fully clarified. This study aims to assess gene signatures and prognostic value of m6A-related lncRNAs in PDAC. The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset and the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) dataset were explored to identify m6A-related lncRNAs. Univariate, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) and multivariate Cox regression were performed to construct the m6A-related lncRNAs prognostic riskscore (m6A-LPR) model to predict the overall survival (OS) in the TCGA training cohort. Kaplan–Meier curve with log-rank test and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were used to evaluate the prognostic value of the m6A-LPR. Furthermore, the robustness of the m6A-LPR was further validated in the ICGC cohort. Tumor immunity was evaluated using ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms. A total of 262 m6A-related lncRNAs were identified in two datasets. In the TCGA training cohort, 28 prognostic m6A-related lncRNAs were identified and the m6A-LPR including four m6A-related lncRNAs was constructed. The m6A-LPR was able to identify high-risk patients with significantly poorer OS and accurately predict OS in both the TCGA training cohort and the ICGC validation cohort. Analysis of tumor immunity revealed that high-risk groups had remarkably lower stromal, immune, and ESTIMATE scores. Moreover, high-risk groups were associated with significantly higher levels of plasma B cells and resting NK cells infiltration, and lower levels of infiltrating resting memory CD4 T cells, monocytes, and resting mast cells. Our study proposed a robust m6A-related prognostic signature of lncRNAs for predicting OS in PDAC, which provides some clues for further studies focusing on the mechanism process underlying m6A modification of lncRNAs.