A novel gene signature based on five immune checkpoint genes predicts the survival of glioma

BACKGROUND: Glioma is the most common and fatal type of nerve neoplasm in the central nervous system. Several biomarkers have been considered for prognosis prediction, which is not accurate enough. We aimed to carry out a gene signature related to the expression of immune checkpoints which was enough for its performance in prediction. METHODS: Gene expression of immune checkpoints in TGGA database was filtrated. The 5 selected genes underwent verification by COX and Lasso-COX regression. Next, the selected genes were included to build a novel signature for further analysis. RESULTS: Patients were sub-grouped into high and low risk according to the novel signature. Immune response, clinicopathologic characters, and survival showed significant differences between those 2 groups. Terms including “naive,” “effector,” and “IL-4” were screened out by GSEA. The results showed strong relevance between the signature and immune response. CONCLUSIONS: We constructed a gene signature with 5 immune checkpoints. The signature predicted survival effectively. The novel signature performed more functional than previous biomarkers. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s41016-020-00220-2.