An immune-related gene pairs signature predicts overall survival in serous ovarian carcinoma

BACKGROUND: Ovarian cancer has the highest death rate of all fatal gynecological cancers. Increasing evidence has depicted the correlation between serous ovarian carcinoma prognosis and immune signature. Therefore, the aim of this study is to develop a robust prognostic immune-related gene pairs (IRGPs) signature for estimating overall survival (OS) of HGSOC. METHODS: Gene expression profiling and clinical information of serous ovarian carcinoma patients were derived from three public data sets, divided into training and validation cohorts. Immune genes significantly associated with prognosis were selected. RESULTS: Among 1,534 immune genes, a 20 IRGPs signature was built which was significantly associated with OS in the training cohort (P=1.44×10(−14); hazard ratio [HR] =3.05 [2.26, 4.10]). In the validation datasets, the IRGPs signature significantly divided patients into high- vs low- risk groups considering their prognosis (P=4.30×10(−3); HR =1.48 [1.13, 1.95]) and was prognostic in multivariate analysis. Functional analysis showed that several biological processes, including EMT and TGF-β related pathways, enriched in the high-risk group. Macrophages M2 was significantly higher in the high-risk group compared with the low-risk group. CONCLUSION: We successfully constructed a robust IRGPs signature with prognostic values for serous ovarian carcinoma, providing new insights into post-operational treatment strategies.