Significance of CD80 as a Prognostic and Immunotherapeutic Biomarker in Lung Adenocarcinoma

Lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) is the primary cause of death among pulmonary cancer patients. Upregulation of CD80 may interact with cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4) to promote tumor progression and provide a potential target for biological antitumor therapy. However, the role of CD80 in LUAD is still unclear. To investigate the function of CD80 in LUAD, we collected transcriptomic data from 594 lung samples from The Cancer Genome Atlas of America (TCGA) database, along with the corresponding clinical information. We systematically explored the role of CD80 in LUAD using bioinformatics methods, including GO enrichment analysis, KEGG pathway analysis, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), co-expression analysis, and the CIBERSORT algorithm. Finally, we investigated the differences between the two subgroups of CD80 expression in terms of some drug sensitivity, using the pRRophetic package to screen small molecular drugs for therapeutic use. A predictive model based on CD80 for LUAD patients was successfully constructed. In addition, we discovered that the CD80-based prediction model was an independent prognostic factor. Co-expression analysis revealed 10 CD80-related genes, including oncogenes and immune-related genes. Functional analysis showed that the differentially expressed genes in patients with high CD80 expression were mainly located in immune-related signaling pathways. CD80 expression was also associated with immune cell infiltration and immune checkpoints. Highly expressing patients were more sensitive to several drugs, such as rapamycin, paclitaxel, crizotinib, and bortezomib. Finally, we found evidence that 15 different small molecular drugs may benefit the treatment of LUAD patients. This study found that elevated CD80 pairs could improve the prognosis of LUAD patients. CD80 is likely to be a potential as a prognostic and therapeutic target. The future use of small molecular drugs in combination with immune checkpoint blockade to enhance antitumor therapy and improve prognosis for LUAD patients is promising. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10528-023-10343-7.