Identification of prognosis value and immune microenvironment features of ceRNAs in NSCLC with distinct gene mutation.

ABSTRACT

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), representing about 85% of all lung cancer (LC) cases, is by far the most common form of LC. High-throughput technology largely expands our ability to analyze the transcriptome data and a plethora of cancer-driving genes has been identified, paving the path to immune therapy, where the effects of cancer-causing mutations are countered with microenvironment complexity. Given that competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs) participate in diverse cellular processes by a broad array of mechanisms in cancer, we scrutinized the immune microenvironment and ceRNA signatures in mutation-specific NSCLC by integrating TCGA-NSCLC and NSCLS-associated GEO datasets. The results suggested that RASA1mutation clusters in LUSC had a better prognosis and immunity. Immune cell infiltration analysis indicated that the cluster with RASA1 mutation had a significantly high level of NK T cells and a low level of memory effector T cells. Further analysis of immune-related ceRNAs in LUSC showed that hsa-miR-23a was significantly associated with survival in RASA1-mutation samples, indicating that there may be specific ceRNAs in mutation-specific subgroups in NSCLC. In conclusion, this study verified the presence of complexity and diversity of NSCLC gene mutations and highlighted the intricate links between gene mutation and tumor environment features.