An immune and epigenetics-related scoring model and drug candidate prediction for hepatic carcinogenesis via dynamic network biomarker analysis and connectivity mapping

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a malignant tumor with high mortality. This study aimed to build a prognostic signature for HCC patients based on immune-related genes (IRGs) and epigenetics-related genes (EPGs). RNA-seq data from Gene Expression Omnibus were used for dynamic network biomarker (DNB) analysis to identify 56 candidate IRG–EPG–DNBs and their first-neighbor genes. These genes were screened using LASSO-Cox regression analysis to finally obtain five candidate genes—RNF2, YBX1, EZH2, CAD, and PSMD1—which constituted the prognostic signature panel. According to this panel, patients in The Cancer Genome Atlas and International Cancer Genome Consortium were divided into high- and low-risk groups. The prognosis, clinicopathological features, and immune cell infiltration significantly differed between the two risk groups. The prognostic ability of the signature panel and expression profiling were further validated using online databases. We used an independent cohort of patients to validate the expression profiles of the five genes using reverse transcription–PCR. CMap and CellMiner predicted four small molecule drug–protein pairs based on the five prognostic genes. Of them, two market drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (AT-13387 and KU-55933) have emerged as candidates for HCC study. This new signature panel may serve as a potential prognostic marker, engendering the possibility of novel personalized therapy with classification of HCC patients.