A novel angiogenesis-associated risk score predicts prognosis and characterizes the tumor microenvironment in colon cancer.

ABSTRACT

Background: Angiogenesis of the tumor microenvironment (TME) can promote the proliferation and metastases of colon cancer (CC). However, there is a lack of bioinformatics analysis to comprehensively clarify the molecular characteristics, immune interaction characteristics and predictive values of angiogenesis characteristics in CC patients. This study aimed to perform a comprehensive elucidation of the correlation between angiogenesis and CC for the purpose of improving the clinical management of CC. Methods: Angiogenesis-associated genes (AAGs) were evaluated in the population of CC patients from the Cancer Genome Atlas database and Gene Expression Omnibus dataset. The expression, prognostic role, and immune cell infiltration of AAGs were assessed first. And then we established the AAGs score to further explore the prognosis and treatment response of angiogenesis characteristics in individual patient. Results: Totally, we identified two different molecular subtypes of angiogenesis, and there was a significant difference in the background of genome, expression profiles, prognosis, and characteristics of TME between two subtypes. And the AAGs score was independently associated with over survival in CC patients, the prognostic value was significant and confirmed in the entire cohort. And we also constructed a nomogram based on the risk score and clinical parameters to maximize the predictive ability of the risk score. Additionally, the AAGs score was significantly correlated with the tumor mutation burden score, cancer stem cell score and drug sensitivity. Conclusions: Our study elucidated the role of angiogenesis characteristics in CC and the AAGs score could help clinicians plan for individual management with chemotherapy agents and promote the development of immunotherapy in CC. Prospective studies need to be conducted to further confirm our findings.